


Joy Cometh in the Morning

by openended



Series: Bomb in a Birdcage [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Character of Faith, Epistolary Elements, F/F, Fear Demons (Dragon Age), First Day (Dragon Age), First Kiss, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Harrowing, Heartbreak, Knight-Enchanter, Letters, Mages and Templars, Magic, Origin Story, Politics, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Spells & Enchantments, Summerday, Teaching, The Chantry, The Circle, Trauma, Val Royeaux, Wintersend, Young Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-05-08 19:00:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 56,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5509442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years later, when Corypheus holds her by her wrist and dangles her over Haven’s snow, she’ll look at him and think <i>I have survived worse than you</i>. (A story about Ariadne Trevelyan, from the beginning.)</p><p>Updates every other Wednesday. (Rape warning begins in chapter 11).</p><p>» Due to reasons of Real Life, this is on pretty permanent hiatus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much to tumblr users bloomingcnidarians for her cheerleading, and thievinghippo for her beta work.
> 
> Note that this story will, eventually, deal with rape and sexual assault. Warnings will be provided and adjusted accordingly.

_“Be brave, Ariadne,” Papa had said.  
_

_The wolves were out again, frightening the chickens, and Papa took his bow and quiver outside after supper._

_She followed, because Mama was paying attention to the dishes, and Ariadne liked the snow when it fell earlier, glittering in the sunlight. It was only when she caught up with Papa, following his slow tracks by the bright cold moonlight, that the trees seemed to press in around her; the shadows grew a little too long, a little too many._

_Her excitement abruptly faded when she reached his side. Papa’s hand settled on her shoulder, large and warm and comforting, but not enough to combat the chill down her spine. She was here now, but she no longer wanted to be in the woods._

The Chantry is warm. The Chantry is warm and inviting while she stands in the snowy street, staring at the open door. Light glows from within, a soft yellow beacon of safety in the dark.

But her feet remain still upon the cobblestones. Even though the Sister grasps her hand and tries to lead her forward, Ariadne doesn’t move - can’t. Snowflakes stick to her eyelashes, melting when she blinks.

She looks up at the woman holding her hand. The Sister looks cold, trying her best not to shiver, but Ariadne doesn’t feel the winter chill. She only feels strangely empty, wanting her father and mother. But they aren’t here, and neither is their little house, and neither are the chickens, and even the wolves are probably gone, scared off by the fire. 

Ariadne walks inside, small footsteps on the slippery snow-covered stones, because Papa told her to be brave.

***

The Chant of Light teaches her to read. She knows the words long before she recognizes them on paper, can recite all of Exaltations by her second year just from listening to the choir during services.

Andraste teaches her to write. The Sisters place the parchment and pencil in front of her when she is six, open the Chant and tell her to copy the words. Sitting in the front pew, plank of wood across her lap, she fidgets on the hard, angular bench. Her writing suffers for three months, until she learns to ignore the discomfort.

From the day she arrives, the Sisters largely ignore her. She is quiet and respectful, a quick study and not an annoyance, not someone who requires their attention more than a simple direction. She takes up less space than the other orphans.

Ariadne’s pencil scratches against the parchment, louder and louder as she sinks into the words.

> _Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls  
>  From these emerald waters doth life begin anew_

She blinks, focuses on the words on her page; black graphite against ivory parchment, perfectly-formed letters, not the indecipherable scrawl of her peers that careens downward at the end of each line. Graceful curves and swirls, her pencil moves in even lines across her pages. The bored voices of the others fall away into nothing, leaving only the memorized verse in her mind and the smooth scratch of her pencil.

> _Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you  
>  In my arms lies Eternity._

She turns the page in the small, thick book. They’ve all been given books of blank parchment to work in, leather-bound, stamped with a sunburst, and tied closed with twine; basic and unremarkable, but sturdier than the sheets they began with. When he isn’t pulling the pigtails of any girl who won’t pay attention to him, Tristan Hill draws crude sketches in the corner of his book, makes the images move when he flips the pages fast enough. She’s careful not to make eye contact with him, and years pass before she learns the art of ignoring Tristan in a manner that doesn’t provoke him.

Winter wind blows drafts through the open room, making her candle flicker. She sniffs and brushes her fingers across the blank page before she continues and transcribes the final verse of the stanza. Deep brown leather cover, smooth cream parchment, her book looks just like those of her peers, but the edges are crisp and unwrinkled, the leather unscuffed. This book - her book - is not unremarkable. She’s nearly finished with the first canticle and has more than enough space left for the rest. The Sisters have given them all copies of the Chant for themselves, but this one - this one will be _hers_.

***

The faithful are treated better. A smile when caught reading past bedtime, a sweet from a secret pocket, a bit of understanding when childish arguments arise. None are treated poorly, but the faithful are treated better and all the orphans notice.

Some don’t mind. Others run away under the cover of night, whispering of unfairness and a better chance outside the Chantry’s walls. Ariadne sees them sometimes, when she’s old enough to stand beside the Chantry board; they rarely look as though they found those better chances. Most understand and display the level of faith the Sisters and Brothers and Revered Mother expect from them, some even pretend at more; even fewer succeed at fooling their elders.

Ariadne counts herself proudly among the few who do not have to pretend. Sister Caroline sends her outside for the first time when she is nine, to stand on the Chantry’s steps and recite Benedictions until the supper bell rings. 

Winter has arrived in full force, bitter wind burning her cheeks pink, but the Chantry is warm at her back. It’s warm the first day, and the second, and every day after that. She stands on the steps and sings out proudly, spreading the Chant as far as she can without shouting. Rain or snow or sunshine or fog, she stands up straight and believes every word she says.

She turns around when the bell rings, and the Chantry’s open doors are bright and inviting, just like the night she arrived. She smiles when she walks inside, donation jar heavier than anyone else.

She’s ten when she finds the necklace. Lost and forgotten and stuck in a muddy boot print, it’s only when the clouds part in an especially-rainy Drakonis that the sun catches on the golden charm. A tiny gold sunburst on a simple gold chain, she slips the necklace in her pocket and only takes it out at night, when the rest are long asleep.

Sometimes the others - led by Tristan, until he runs away one night - tease her for the strength of her beliefs, surrounding her and mocking her for her silence and faith, calling her names when they grow old enough to sneak out at night and overhear the slurs coming from the tavern down the street. The boys turn especially cruel when she’s of an age they think she should fancy them and she does not, and some of the girls join in when they realize what her lack of fancying boys means. 

Ariadne squares her shoulders and ignores them, remains quiet in response for days and months and years, but brings out her handwritten copy of the Chant, the one she finished when she was nine, still pristine and perfect, though a little worn around the edges from reading; she finds comfort in Trials, reading by moonlight. _The Chantry is home_ , she tells herself, wiping her tears away, awake long after the other girls have long fallen asleep. _Or at least home enough_ , she adds on particularly bad days, when the others are meaner than usual and she receives more insults and spits of tobacco than donations while standing on the Chantry steps; on those days, she sets Trials aside and dreams of a small house in the woods, of chickens, of a smiling mother and a kind father whose faces she can no longer recall.

The Sisters leave her to her own devices, let her study as she pleases as their energies are drawn toward new orphans needing comfort and the older ones causing trouble. Revered Mother ignores her, letting her slip past as a welcome reprieve from her peers, the ones who have chosen not to leave but to stay and be difficult, requiring discipline and strained talks with shopkeepers missing inventory. Weeks pass when she barely says a word to anyone, when barely a word is said _to_ her.

But the Chantry is home. Arched ceilings and stained glass, soothing soprano singing the Chant every morning in practice, soft golden candles and spicy incense wrapping around her like a blanket, it is home.

***

A month before her thirteenth birthday, her fingertips spark while teaching Benedictions to one of the younger orphans. Revered Mother gives her two hours to collect the few things she can call hers and say goodbye to the people she never called friends, before she is dragged away from the Chantry.

It’s a small spark, a tiny point of light arcing from her fingertip to the parchment, extinguished before it even lands on the paper. If it weren’t the middle of a humid summer, she thinks she could’ve explained it to a horrified Sister Maud as static, simply dry air and metal. Static sparks look different, feel different, make a snap in the air, but Ariadne is good and quiet, never a bother - she thinks she could’ve explained it, and stayed.

But it is Solace and raining, and Revered Mother has no tolerance for even a whiff of magic outside the Circle. A runner sprints across the city with a notice.

Escorted by two towering templars, Ariadne walks out of the Chantry’s doors into a summer rainstorm, sobbing hard enough that she trips and falls down the steps, scraping her hands and knees on the cobblestones. Her bag falls open beside her, half its meager contents spilling onto the wet street. She shoves her belongings back into the canvas; her clothes may be soaked, but at least her Chant is unharmed, safe at the bottom of her bag with the necklace. 

The female templar kneels down next her on the stone and helps her up, gently holds her arm. “It will be okay,” she says, with a kind smile.

Ariadne focuses on the sunburst tattoos on the templar’s hands until she’s steady on her feet again. She doubts the templar’s words. The Sister who brought her to the Chantry said the same thing, and it was for a while, until this afternoon, when it suddenly wasn’t. The templars will pick her up and carry her, even restrain her if necessary; she’s seen it before - the Chantry sits on the main road through Ostwick. She sniffles and wipes at her cheeks and lets them walk her through the city, away from the Chantry’s high arches and brilliant stained glass, to the Circle’s intimidating tower overlooking the coast.

_Be brave, Ariadne._  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to tumblr users bloomingcnidarians and thecrazycatmage for their encouragement, and thievinghippo for her beta work.

Her first night at the Circle, someone accidentally raises the spirits of nine dead roosters.  


Ariadne’s too nervous and scared and anxious to get much sleep anyway. The sounds, roosters aside, are all strange: waves lapping gently against the rocky shore, gulls squawking as they hunt in the moonlight, the Chantry bell ringing a slightly different tone. The moon comes through the window at the wrong angle and shines directly into her eyes, bright even through closed eyelids; she could turn over and face the wall, but she never slept with her back to other people at the orphanage. She dozes, falling asleep for minutes at a time, easily stirred awake by a creak of a bed or the crash of the waves or the slightly-strained crowing that continues until shortly before dawn. 

She’s fully awake long before the other girls in her room. Though it’s been healed by a kindly older woman with wavy brown hair, her palm still throbs from the knife that cut sharp and deep to draw out blood for her phylactery. She’d watched silently, and moderately horrified, as First Enchanter Cora took her hand, slid the knife over her skin, and held her palm over the vial. Her blood dripped into the glass, glittering deep red as the torchlight flickered and caught the chiseled glass just right. 

The two templars who brought her to the Circle stood guard, stiffly at attention as if they’d expected her to run - as if she had anywhere _to_ run. But Ariadne kept still and quiet while her blood filled the vial. The Knight Commander seemed pleased and together he and Cora left to store it with the rest, while she was fussed over by the spirit healer and brought to her room.

She stares at her palm in the growing light, tracing her fingertip over the smooth, unmarked skin where the knife sliced through. Lying still and silent, she drops her hand back to the bed and watches the sun rise from the same wrong angle as the moon. While the other five dress grouchily, stifling yawns between grumbling about the noise, Ariadne sits up and bows her head and whispers her morning prayers. _The Light shall lead her safely through the paths of this world and into the next; for she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water._

Margaret, a dark-skinned curly-haired girl who claims to have been casting spells since she was five, gestures for Ariadne to join her and the others. Not wanting to make them wait, Ariadne cuts her prayers short - the Maker will understand - and quickly changes into the grey robe she was given last night. The fabric billows around her shoulders and the sleeves extend far beyond her arms, but the robe hits her legs mid-calf and she wonders what shape of person required a garment built like this. She frowns at it, but it’s not the first piece of ill-fitting secondhand clothing she’s had to wear until someone can find her something better, and she rolls up her sleeves as best she can and follows Margaret out of the room.

Ariadne tries hopelessly to keep track of the twists and turns and stairs that lead them down to the Great Hall. They find an unoccupied table in the back corner and sit. Ariadne blinks and concentrates on the whorls of the wooden tables. She’s not tired, not like the others are tired with bleary eyes and drooped shoulders, but she is _exhausted_. Yesterday morning, she sat down for breakfast at the end of the table she’d sat at every morning since she can remember, and silently ate her porridge. It seems so far away, that bowl of porridge, like it was some other girl eating it and not her. As exhausted as she is, she doubts she could fall asleep now anyway, not even if she was back in the Chantry in her bed with its threadbare blanket and lumpy mattress.

She looks past the sleepy girl across from her - golden skin and round cheeks framed by jet black hair in loose curls that fall from her bun, _Lily_ , she remembers - and takes in the Great Hall. The Circle is now her home, after all, there’s no going back to the Chantry, she might as well learn about the tower. Drapes embroidered with the Circle of Magi heraldry hang above the open windows, fluttering in the wind. Paintings - none she recognizes from her Chantry lessons - dot the stone walls in matching wood frames. Wind blows in from the window behind her and she brushes her hair from her face; the Hall is huge and open and stone, cast in cool shadows in the late summer morning.

The templars and other mages in the Hall look just as exhausted as she feels - and even the Tranquil seem irritable - and she’s suddenly thankful for the roosters. Everyone’s too tired to focus on her, too tired to hover over the new girl.

Except her roommates, who keep trying to talk to her. Their questions are at least kind and polite - all variations on _what kind of magic can you do_ and _where did you come from, do you miss your family_ \- but she doesn’t have the strength within her to talk about the fiery sparks or the orphanage. They all take her silence in stride, like it’s normal, and she nearly feels guilty for not giving them any answers. 

Sarah flips her ice-white hair out of her eyes and complains loudly about the roosters every time a tall, skinny older boy with floppy brown hair turns her way. With a scoff, Joanie rolls their eyes and pulls out a scrap of parchment; they take the pencil from behind their ear and make a mark each time Sarah tosses her hair while the boy’s looking in her direction. From the groupings of marks, Ariadne guesses this isn’t the first time Joanie’s played this game.

When breakfast arrives, her roommates stop trying to drag information from her and instead dig into their food. Ariadne stares into her tea for most of the meal, leaving her egg and toast untouched. She wonders if Sister Maud hadn’t gotten it wrong. Maybe Revered Mother, who’d taken her in at the age of three and watched her grow, had made a mistake, had indulged the hysterical wailings of a Sister getting a bit on in her years. Ariadne would do nearly anything to believe and prove the sparks came from anywhere but her own fingertips: dry air, a sputtering candle, the flick of a stolen flint lighter. But she knows, deep inside, that the sparks came from her.

Lily grabs an apple from the bowl and slips it into Ariadne’s pocket when they rise after breakfast. “In case you get hungry before lunch,” she whispers.

Ariadne feels a smile, small but genuine, tug at her lips. “Thank you.” She stands a little straighter as they step into the crowd of robed mages and apprentices, passing by armored templars.

“Why are you keeping track, anyway?” Mari asks Joanie when they file out of the Hall. She pushes her short brown hair behind her pointed ears and out of her face, revealing a deep scar cutting through her right eyebrow and cheek. “She’s never going to catch on that you’re doing it.”

Joanie folds the paper and sticks it back into the pocket of their robes and the pencil back behind their ear. “I’m testing a theory. If she tries to flirt with Daniel at least ten times at breakfast, he will accidentally reciprocate at least once by lunch, and she won’t be quite so unbearable after supper and I might actually get some studying done.”

Lily falls in line next to Joanie, fingers tangled in her hair as she tries to twist it up again while she walks. She wiggles her shoulders at Ariadne, indicating for her to follow. “We could just _tell_ Daniel that Sarah likes him, solve the problem for all of us,” she says around a mouthful of pins.

Joanie makes an undignified noise. “And ruin my perfectly sound mathematical theory?”

“Fair point,” Lily says, sticking a pin in her hair, “nevermind.”

Margaret elbows her way toward them through the crowded hallway and hands Ariadne a piece of parchment. “Here’s your schedule. You’re with Lily and Mari all day, so just follow them. If you get lost, use an inside staircase if you can - not the ones by the windows - until you find someone who can point you in the right direction.”

“What’s wrong with the stairs?” Ariadne puts the parchment alongside the apple in her pocket, deciding to look at it later, when she’s not trying to navigate through unfamiliar halls.

“Blackrock Tower was originally an Avvar stronghold,” Margaret says. “It's great for keeping people stuck at the entrance, not that great for getting around. We’ll see you at lunch.” She and Joanie turn left, disappearing down a dim hallway.

“I’ll copy the map for you tonight,” Lily offers.

Nodding, overwhelmed with misleading staircases and too many people and tidbits about crushes she doesn’t understand, Ariadne silently follows Lily and Mari until they usher her into a room. Three rows of desks take the place of the pews and overcrowded tables of the Chantry’s impromptu classroom, and a smile twitches at Ariadne’s lips as she takes a seat at the empty desk next to Lily. Proper space to learn, close enough to whisper but far enough away to not bang her elbows into the people beside her. 

Though all she knows is the Chant and its stories, and though her bed’s at the wrong angle and all the nighttime noises are wrong, and though she hasn’t shown any hint of magic since the spark yesterday morning, she at least has her own desk.

***

The Circle is louder, more chaotic than she expected, and her sense of displacement grows as the days pass. She expected somber quiet and study, regimen and strict protocol, something akin to the Chantry; something that fit all the stories she’d heard. But now she’s here, silent and studious in a Circle that is...not.

And though there are rules and protocol, and though there is studying, it all seems very much more like a _guideline_ than a requirement. 

First Enchanter Cora encourages experimentation, Ariadne learns later once the real story about the roosters surfaces. Pushing boundaries and testing theories, even if they end with undead birds or purple frogs or missing eyebrows, catch Cora’s eye and approval more than leaving those theories safely on paper. Knight Commander Edward and his templars stand guard, quietly watching, only intervening when someone’s life or safety is at stake.

When Lily isn’t nose-deep in her studies, hoping for someone to injure themselves so she has an opportunity to practice healing spells, she spends an unsuccessful two weeks pestering Ser Emelie into explaining why _lack of sleep on a Tuesday_ doesn’t qualify as a danger to someone’s safety. Despite herself, Ariadne smiles at Lily’s attempts. She stifles her laughter, especially when Lily stands with her hands on her hips, shoulders squared, glasses perched on her nose, and perfectly imitates Senior Enchanter Ruth’s lecturing style. Even Emelie has trouble keeping a straight face at that, when Lily accents all the wrong syllables and tilts her head just right as she recites a thoroughly fake University of Orlais study on sleep and human health.

After three weeks, the roosters have faded from almost everyone’s memory, replaced by a mishap with an ice mine in the rookery. But when Lily gives up the act and turns to Ariadne in mock defeat, she’s grinning wide.

Ariadne feels something warm start to build inside of her chest.

***

“Your new roommate’s a bit odd.”

Joanie doesn’t look up from their parchment, but takes the pencil out of their mouth. “ _This_ is what you’re interrupting me to talk about?” Their Harrowing’s soon, they can feel it, and though they’ll have to face a demon and not a potions practical, any break in their focus is unwelcome.

“I’ve been told she has a certain affinity for fire, which puts her in my school. I take an interest in apprentices that come my way.” Michael carefully sits down on the bench opposite Joanie.

“How’s that make her odd?” Joanie frowns at the recipe on their parchment, herb quantities scratched out and rewritten three different times, after three different - and three unwanted - results. “And didn’t you only get that job because Lucas tried his hand at blood magic and the experiment went awry?” They cross out _dawn lotus_ and replace it with _embrium_ and mentally run through the resulting reaction.

He ignores that and leans against the corner wall, stretching his legs out on the bench in front of him. “Because she’s been here over a month and I’ve not heard a peep of magic out of her.” He slides his fingers under the leather and metal supporting his knee, trying to adjust it.

“Again,” they adjust the quantity of embrium, “how’s that make her odd? Plenty of apprentices need time. If I recall correctly, you needed an entire year before you could even produce a small flame.” With a smirk, they look up at him. They were twelve years old at the time, and scared that they hadn’t produced so much as a single icicle for two weeks; but then their brother - fifteen years older and capable of a raging inferno with just the twitch of his hand - confided that he had taken a year to manage something simple. It was a much-needed and comforting secret at the time, but now it’s a great story for teasing.

He glares, but turns serious. “She’s a bit distant; Cora and I are both a little worried.”

Joanie sighs. “She’s not like you and me, Michael. She doesn’t have family at all, and from what I’ve overheard her and Lily talking about, I don’t think she had any friends at the orphanage. This is all new for her, give her time.”

“Joanie.”

Exasperated, they drop the pencil on the table. “If I promise to talk to her, will you leave me alone so I can finish this potion recipe?”

With a wide smile, Michael stands and affectionately rubs Joanie’s shaved head. “That’s all I wanted.”

“Please leave. And see Ruth about that brace. If it doesn’t fit right, it’s just going to make it worse.”

“Yes, mother.” He smirks.

“Go away now.”

***

The night Sarah’s taken for her Harrowing, if nerves and worry for their friend weren’t already keeping them all awake, the raging thunderstorm takes care of any hope of sleep. Howling wind nearly drowns out the crashing waves, punctuated by blinding white flashes and loud booming thunder. Ariadne tries to focus on her reading - three very dense chapters on the theory of Fadewalking - but the storm outside keeps breaking her attention. Sarah’s empty bed beside hers taunts her, reminds her of her own eventual Harrowing.

“You’ve been here about a month now, right?”

She looks up from the book in her lap to see Joanie standing next to her bed. “Yes.”

“How are you settling in?”

“Uhm,” she starts. “Fine?”

Joanie fidgets and Ariadne looks instinctively across the room for Lily, only to remember that Lily’s in a small group with Mari, working with Cora tonight and studying the storm.

“Oh, _Maker_ , you are bad at this,” Margaret says to Joanie before turning her attention to Ariadne. “What they mean is, you’re new here and we’re not, but we were new once. It’s a bit much at the beginning, isn’t it?” 

Ariadne curls her shoulders forward slightly and scoots backward on the bed, just enough so her back touches the pillows. She shakes her head. “I’m fine.” She’s never felt farther from fine, but the words to explain how paralyzed she feels every time she steps out of their shared room, how lost she feels in all her lessons and whenever she’s alone, none of those words come easy to herself, much less out loud to these two.

“Okay,” Margaret says gently, as though to a caged animal, and leans back in her chair. “If you need to, you can talk to us. Joanie and I have both been here for four years, we know how tough it is at the start.”

Ariadne can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of times her roommates at the Chantry offered their support like this and meant it. Usually the offer came followed by an attempt to trap her into admitting feelings for some boy whose name she didn’t even know. But Margaret sounds genuine, they all do when they talk to her, and so she relaxes slightly and lets her shoulders fall back. She’s not quite comfortable confiding in them just yet, but it’s nice to know they’re there. “Thanks.”

“Oh,” Joanie says before Ariadne can reluctantly turn back to her book, “you don’t need to do any of the reading Bertram assigns you. Cora has him teaching the Chantry-assigned topics because he’s too old and too drunk to usefully teach anything else; he’ll never test you on any of that.” They wave in disgust at the open book.

She blinks and tilts her head. “But don’t I need to learn this?” It’s baffling, the idea of the Chantry requiring study of anything useless. 

Joanie and Margaret look at each other, and then look back at Ariadne.

“Cora’s philosophy is that reading and theory are good _background_ ,” Margaret says, “but not a replacement for actually doing something. It’s...I don’t know what the Chantry told you about the Circles, but Ostwick’s...not that. Magic’s celebrated here. You don’t need to be afraid of it, or keep it locked up.”

Slowly, Ariadne nods. When the others turn back to their own work, she stares at her fingertips. They seem so very normal.

***

Ariadne stumbles upon the library during her seventh week, wandering lost without her map after supper. 

She stops mid-stride, one step from the top of the flight. She blinks, takes a deep breath, and finishes her last step. Unshelved books and manuscripts sit stacked carefully on the floor, and she sidesteps the precarious-looking piles and enters the first room. She looks up, and up and up, eyes widening at the shelves that reach to the ceiling, packed full of books.

The Chantry had a library too, but much smaller, only a few shelves in a side room off the main hall; Revered Mother carefully curated the selection herself, not allowing even the most innocent of non-Chantry texts on its shelves. Ariadne doubts Cora knows half of what’s in these rooms, doubts even more that she minds one way or the other on the material. 

For a moment, she’s frozen: Chantry literature is right in front of her, gold lettering on the wall surrounded by an illuminated, shining sunburst. She scans the shelves and finds a few familiar titles amongst many unfamiliar ones. She trails her fingertips across the leather spines and warmth begins to spread through her veins, replacing the subtle chill since she arrived at the tower. Like a moth to a flame, she easily found the Circle’s Chantry within her first week; the small chapel had warmed her some and began to set her at ease with its comforting familiarity. 

But the rest of the library, a step backward out of the room and five down the hallway, contains history and magic, politics and fiction, topics she can’t even imagine.

She takes a deep breath, turns, and walks the six steps deeper into the library.

Lily finds Ariadne the next morning, asleep with her head on a copy of Philliam, a Bard!’s more exuberant writings. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she whispers, gently nudging Ariadne’s shoulder with one hand, waving a mug of tea in front of her nose with the other.

“Hm? What?” Ariadne mumbles, slowly waking up. She lifts her head and blinks, waiting for Lily to come into focus. Her friend glows, backlit by the morning sun. Momentarily horrified, Ariadne looks down at the open page. She exhales in relief; though she’s certain she has ink stains on her cheeks, she at least hadn’t drooled all over herself - and the book - in her sleep.

“Sleep well?” Lily smirks.

Ariadne braces herself against the chair and twists her back, wincing as her spine pops. “This chair is no substitute for a bed,” she grimaces. She stumbles when she tries to stand and slams her knee into the leg of the table. With a careful exhale, and Lily’s hand on her elbow, she centers herself. “Thanks,” she says, and takes the offered mug.

“I also stole you a muffin,” Lily pulls the napkin-covered blueberry muffin from her robes. “You missed breakfast.” 

Ariadne groans. If breakfast is over, then she has maybe half an hour to eat, change into her training gear, and run outside for combat practice. Cora’s insistence that every mage know how to defend themselves without magic is nice in theory, but leaves Ariadne missing the target right in front of her and awkwardly losing her balance. At least she’s only in hand-to-hand combat now; she dreads the day she has to learn to fight with a staff. Margaret, Joanie, and Sarah have told her to be patient with herself, and even Mari - the only apprentice good enough to be allowed to practice with proper weapons - said that it takes time.

But she doesn’t have fire, or even sparks anymore, and she can barely stay standing in the combat ring. She’d been excited about learning, thrilled about having her own desk and finding the library, but she stands around for so many lessons, and failing when she’s forced to try. Patience is all well and good, for people who can do everything.

“Come on,” Lily says, softly, gently encouraging. “Joanie’s waiting. They promised to go over some of the new moves with us before class.”

Though Lily - graceful Lily who never ends up facing the wrong way - is the last person Ariadne knows to need help in hand-to-hand, she’s grateful for the pretense. She breaks a piece off the muffin. “Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Aren’t you cold?” Lily tightens her scarf and sits down next to Ariadne on the Tower’s back steps. She huddles in on herself, trying shrink into the bulky sweater underneath her robes as she looks out over the ocean.  


Ariadne shakes her head and stares out at the waves. The grey sky nearly blends with the greyish blue ocean, spring fighting to break through the last vestiges of winter. She’s not been cold all season, not even now sitting on the frigid stone steps in just her thin robes, with nothing more than a sleeveless tunic and light leggings underneath, not even when the wind picks up. Being warm, almost hot, without a coat outside in this weather isn’t particularly normal, she knows, but Ariadne hopes her magical skill doesn’t begin and end with her internal body temperature.

She listens to the waves roll against the rocky shore for a moment, watching the white spray crash over the rocks and onto the crumbling bottom steps below them, and then takes a deep breath and turns to Lily. “How long did it take you to do magic? Once you were here, I mean.”

Lily presses her lips together, thinking. “Three or four weeks. I was really angry. That helped.”

Astonished, Ariadne lifts an eyebrow. Just last night she watched Lily gently carry a spider from Mari’s nightstand to the windowsill and let it outside, saving it from death by dropped book.

Lily sighs slowly and looks away. “When my parents found out I was a mage, they couldn’t wait to get rid of me. They wouldn’t...” She pauses and swallows, blinking rapidly. “My father wouldn’t look at me for the two days it took the templars to come to our house, no matter how hard I tried. He didn’t even say goodbye.”

The hurt in Lily’s voice is raw and tugs at something deep inside Ariadne. She hesitantly sets her bare palm on Lily’s bony knee. “I’m sorry.” Lily’s only been here half a year longer than Ariadne has, and was taken from an actual family. Ariadne offers her a look she hopes is supportive; she’s had ten years to adjust to a life without parents, but she doesn’t remember them at all.

Nodding, Lily takes a sharp breath and stays perfectly still for a moment. The wind blows her hair around her face, into her eyes. She exhales and leans back, pressing her palms on the rough, damp steps behind her. “Still no sparks?” She looks up at the sky.

“Still no sparks.” Ariadne takes her hand back and stares at her fingertips. No magical sparks, at least.

With a smile, Lily brushes the hair from her eyes and turns to face Ariadne. “But you beat Mari yesterday in combat practice.”

Ariadne feels her own smile rise all the way from her toes. It took months, and countless bruises and scrapes, but she finally beat her friend, even when Mari used all the tricks she learned in the alienage. “I did, didn’t I?”

The bell rings and Lily stands, brushing her hands off on her thighs. She offers her hand to help Ariadne up. “You should talk to Margaret; she helped Sarah and Mari when they were having trouble.”

A tingle rushes through her as Ariadne’s fingers touch Lily’s. The tingle’s been happening more frequently lately, when she brushes up against Lily in the hall, or Lily smiles at her across the table at breakfast, or she says something that makes Lily laugh. She reluctantly lets go of Lily’s hand as they turn to walk inside. “Maybe.” 

She dreads the lessons where her friends conjure fire and ice and lightning while she merely sits against the wall, watching; but the idea of conjuring fire or ice or lightning with her mind carries its own sense of dread.

***

“I _can’t_ ,” Ariadne huffs in frustration as Margaret walks her through another mental exercise before bed. She angrily thumps the end of the practice staff on the stone floor. No sparks fall out, though she didn’t expect them to. “I’m not magic, I can’t do any of this. I shouldn’t be here.” She regrets even asking Margaret for help, though it took nearly a month to build the courage. Three weeks of exercises and _imagine the spark in your mind_ , and she doesn’t feel any closer than before. She doesn’t even feel the Fade just slightly beyond her fingertips, the way Joanie described it with a large book and complex diagrams. 

She feels angry and upset, disappointed and useless, discouraged and defeated. But she doesn’t feel at all magical.

Ariadne turns from Margaret, takes two steps away, and stares out the window at the calm spring evening sea below. If she listens hard enough, she can hear the quiet waves through the chatter of her friends. She tries to focus on the rhythm of the waves - in and out, up and down, _breathe in, breathe out_ , Lily whispered at dinner when Ariadne’s frustration threatened to bubble over - but the words that helped at dinner aren’t helping now, and tears sting at her eyes. Three weeks of exercises, and three weeks of failures. 

At night, when her friends are asleep and the room is quiet, she remembers her dreams of serving the Chantry. Initiate, Sister, Cleric, maybe even Grand Cleric. Her dreams cannot come to pass now, and there’s little point in hope of something impossible. Yet still she dreams - no longer with the Chantry, but not yet with the Circle. If she cannot belong anywhere, then dreams are all she has - even the false ones.

She takes a deep breath, and wills the tears away.

“Try again,” Margaret says after a moment, with all the patience of a saint. “Close your eyes. Breathe. Focus on the spark.”

Ariadne looks at the floor and tries to block out the others. But Sarah won’t stop talking about how cute Daniel looks now that he’s gotten a haircut while Joanie’s exasperatedly trying to turn Sarah’s swooning back to the magical theory needed to modify an ice wall, and with Lily practicing small storm spells in the corner and Mari talking to a wisp no one else can see, the dormitory is just so very _loud_ and all Ariadne wants is silence so she can focus on the spark and maybe, just maybe, not be so worthless after all -

But what happens instead of silence is a tiny ball of flame erupting in her palm. 

She panics, heart racing in her chest, and her eyes widen as the flames grow larger. Her focus narrows to the fire, and she doesn’t hear the surprised gasps of the others or Margaret’s delighted pride. Her palm itches and her fingertips thrum with power, nearly vibrating with the magic that only a few moments ago had been just out of reach, and she throws the fireball away from her in alarm. The fire easily catches in the drapery and climbs toward the ceiling.

Joanie puts the fire out with a nonchalant wave of their hand and a shower of water, but Mari runs to find Cora.

Ariadne stares at the ashes of the curtains in shock. She jumps when Lily puts her hand on her shoulder.

“Are you alright?”

Overwhelmed by the last few minutes, Ariadne manages to nod hesitantly. Despite the strength of the flames, she isn’t burned anywhere. Even her clothes aren’t singed. Lily’s smiling, and so are the rest, but Ariadne only feels horrified.

“Still think you’re not magic?” Margaret grins as Cora ushers Ariadne out into the hallway.

“Quiet,” Cora says, not unkindly. “It’s almost lights out for you girls,” she says to Lily and Mari. “Margaret, Sarah, Joanie - back to your own rooms, please,” she orders the mages out for the night. Despite the hour, she’s still immaculately put together, kohl around her eyes unsmudged, and not a single strand of black hair out of place from its loose knot at the base of her neck. 

“Am I in trouble?” Ariadne asks on the staircase up to Cora’s office. The other apprentices and mages speak of Cora like a good friend, but she’s barely even seen Cora since she arrived. She stumbles on an uneven step and slams the toe of her shoe into the hard stone. She catches herself on the railing before she can do any real damage; she takes the rest of the stairs slower and more carefully.

Cora smiles and looks over her shoulder at Ariadne in the torch light. She slows her pace. “Far from it. Do you like hot chocolate?”

Ariadne nods. Her palm begins to itch and burn again, turning hot even without holding a flame. She blinks back tears and clenches her fist. Three years old, too young to remember much of that night, though Sister Caroline told her about it when she asked once. Heat and flames and screaming, she remembers that much, especially the screaming. Too young to remember much, and definitely too young to have caused it, but still - those sparks fell from her fingertips at the Chantry without a thought, and she doesn’t know how she created those flames tonight.

Before she steps into Cora’s warmly-lit and friendly office, she vows to silence her magic. She closes her hands into fists, digging her fingernails into her palms. The dread of magical lessons will eventually change to boredom, she’s sure, and enduring the dull repetition of sitting silently while her friends conjure storms and ice and spirits is a small price for keeping more drapery - or worse - from going up in smoke.

Cora offers Ariadne the promised mug of hot chocolate as well as an orange, and sits behind her desk. “Tell me about the fireball.” Her voice is calm, even and conversational, like Ariadne hadn’t just nearly set her entire dormitory on fire.

“I didn’t mean to,” Ariadne stiffens, defending herself. “I’m sorry about the drapes.”

Dismissing the destroyed curtains with a nonchalant wave of her hand, Cora tries again, softer. “Your magic has been stubborn,” she says, beginning to peel her own orange, “it hasn’t shown itself since you arrived. I’m curious as to how the fireball came to be. Why tonight?” She sets the peel aside, separates the orange into two neat halves, and pries away a segment.

Ariadne follows Cora’s lead and digs her short fingernails into the peel. It comes away in tiny, messy pieces, not the long, elegantly curved peel that sits on Cora’s desk. She ignores her hot chocolate and focuses on the orange until her fingers are sticky and smell of citrus. The peeled bits form a small pile in front of her when she finishes. She bites into a piece of the orange and juice explodes in her mouth, tangy and sweet. She picks up her mug, but it’s lukewarm now.

She looks up at Cora, expecting irritation, frustration, maybe even anger that she’s taking so long to answer the question. But Cora gives her a small smile and tilts her head, patiently waiting for Ariadne to speak on her own terms.

She’s not spoken much to Cora since she arrived, only seen her in passing in the halls or at meals. Tall and elegant, clearly accomplished and talented, Ariadne never once questioned the authority Cora so easily holds. Ariadne thinks she ought to be nervous, sitting in the First Enchanter’s office after nearly setting her room on fire, but her heart’s still pounding too fast to be nervous. Mages who lose control of their magic tend to be made Tranquil, she knows, but all she can manage to think is _it was loud, and the drapes are ruined and it’s my fault._

“It was loud,” she says once the silence has stretched on longer than she finds comfortable. 

“In the room?”

She nods. “Margaret was trying to help, but the others…it was loud. I couldn’t think, I just wanted it quiet.”

“What else?” When Ariadne looks up at her again, Cora clarifies. “What else did you want, beside the quiet?”

Ariadne shakes her head and stares longingly into her mug, wishing it was hot again. She sets it on Cora’s desk and sighs. “Nothing, only quiet.” She settles for finishing her orange.

“One of the fundamental rules of practicing magic,” Cora starts, “is that you have to _want_ to make something happen.” She circles her finger through the air and a light breeze flutters through Ariadne’s mousy brown hair, fallen loose from its braid in the chaos. “And one of the first things we teach apprentices, once they can produce magic intentionally, is how to focus that wanting so magic doesn’t just _happen_ everywhere. So it’s controlled.” With slow exhale, the breeze grows stronger, rustling the papers on her desk. The top three pages blow to the floor.

“I’m sorry I ruined the drapes. I don’t - ” she silences when Cora shakes her head. Though the last six months have done nothing but prove to her that the Circle is not the Chantry, she still expects Cora to act like Revered Mother, who would be furious at something like a fire in the drapery. But Cora seems thoroughly unconcerned with the drapes, and even unconcerned with the fire, only concerned about Ariadne. Ariadne sniffles and fidgets with the sleeves of her robe. Cora _should_ be concerned about the drapes and the fire: she nearly set the room aflame - with five other people inside! - and Cora hasn’t mentioned it _once_. 

“You’ve handled noise before, in the Great Hall and some of your classes. The roosters, your first night here. So I’m curious as to why it was tonight that you wanted quiet so badly. Sarah can be particularly excitable, and storm magic isn’t the subtlest when it’s first learned, but none of it was any louder than normal, was it?”

Ariadne shakes her head. Though they’ve passed their Harrowings and moved upstairs to the mage quarters, the older three sometimes come back to the larger room to study; Mari’s been talking to spirits for weeks now, and Lily’s trying so hard to manage a tiny lightning spell that will heat a tea kettle. Ariadne’s eyes fill with tears and her vision starts to blur. She toys with the sunburst charm at her throat, and bites her lip.

“What did you want tonight, Ariadne?” Gentle and quiet, but still pressing for an answer, Cora repeats her question.

“Magic,” she admits with a small sob. “I haven’t done any since the spark in the Chantry, and I know they wouldn’t take me back now even if I wasn’t a mage, so I had to do magic otherwise _you_ wouldn’t want me _here_ either and - ” she stops short, breath caught in her throat.

Cora reaches over her desk and covers Ariadne’s hands with hers. “From the moment you stepped inside the Circle’s doors, you’ve belonged here. We _want_ you here.” Her voice is quiet, but warm and soothing.

Belonging at the Circle isn’t a very comforting thought, even if it does ease her nerves a bit. She misses the Chantry. Even though she had no friends, she knew where she fit, knew how the world worked.

Ariadne withdraws her hands and wipes at her cheeks. She stares at her knees, taking deep breaths. “What if I don’t want to do magic?” she asks, barely above a whisper.

“You certainly don’t have to,” Cora says, leaning back in her chair. “Your experience of magic doesn’t have to be practical. The Circle is primarily a place of learning. I suspect you’re very interested in that.”

Ariadne nods energetically. She’s barely made it through one row on one shelf in the library; the other sections had seemed interesting at first, but the pull of the Chant and all the books she’d never seen before had been too much; just last week she found an entire wall, its windows overlooking the ocean, packed full of books only about Andraste’s childhood. “Very much.” 

“Some apprentices willingly undergo the Rite of Tranquility.” Cora’s face doesn’t change, but her voice sharpens with a clear edge of disapproval.

The nervousness Ariadne knew she ought to have been feeling earlier starts to rise.

“However, no mage or apprentice under my care is ever made Tranquil without their consent, and never before the age of sixteen. I mention this only as an option, which you have three years to think about.”

“No,” Ariadne says, relieved and with only a fraction of hesitation. She’s frightened by her magic, but she’d rather live with the scary ball of fire just out of reach than with the blank stare she sees on the Tranquil who reshelve the books. 

Cora smiles. “You’ll have to learn how to control your magic so incidents like tonight do not happen again, and you’ll have to go through your Harrowing when it’s time. But you are more than welcome to remain in the library as long as you wish.”

Ariadne covers a yawn. She feels better, for her talk with Cora, but not yet comfortable with the flames in her hands, flames that were so very hot and so very real. “Can I…can I go back to my room now?”

Cora nods. “What about your hot chocolate?”

“It’s cold,” Ariadne says, standing.

“Is it?” Cora holds Ariadne’s gaze for a moment, raising her eyebrows slightly, before glancing toward the mug.

Ariadne looks down at her mug. Steam rises from the liquid within. “I didn’t do that,” she whispers. Her fingertips feel normal, without the buzz she felt after the fireball. She doesn’t feel any different than she did a few moments ago.

Cora takes a breath and smiles like she has a secret she’s about to reveal. She clasps her hands in her lap. “Ask me to strike a lightning bolt into the tree in the courtyard and I can do that even half asleep, but my magic is a little too loud for the nuances of temperature control.”

“I didn’t -” she pauses. She _did_ want her hot chocolate, quite a bit. She leaves the mug on Cora’s desk, unwilling to touch it.

“You don’t have to practice magic, Ariadne. But you can. Sleep well, my dear.”

***

A week after the fire, Lily frowns at the seat across from her that’s remained empty throughout supper. It’s not like Ariadne to miss meals, and it’s even less like the templars not to make sure apprentices follow their schedules. “Has anyone seen Ari?”

There’s a chorus of _no_ and shaking heads.

Her frown deepens. Ariadne’s come a long way out of her shell these past months, no longer quite as reserved and quiet as she was when she first arrived; but she’s drawn back into herself since the fire, even though she said her talk with Cora went well. Their room still smells faintly of smoke, but the curtains have been replaced and soot stains brushed off the stone, and there’s otherwise no evidence of Ariadne’s fireball. No _physical_ evidence. 

Ser Emelie, eating with a handful of other templars at the next table, shifts just enough so her armor clanks, drawing Lily’s attention. She looks Lily in the eye and then down at her hands. Tapping the end of her fork against the sunburst tattoo on the back of her hand, she looks back up at Lily and holds her gaze.

“Oh,” Lily says, quietly. With templar approval, mages are allowed to break from their schedule for prayer. She supposes searching for Ariadne in the Chantry should’ve been her first guess.

Emelie nods and then returns to her meal as if nothing happened.

Joanie lifts a questioning eyebrow at Lily, but it’s fleeting. Senior Enchanter Ruth walks past and takes Joanie’s attention, reminding them of their shift in the infirmary.

“Excuse me,” Lily says, though no one’s paying attention to her anymore, and shoves her plate aside. She lifts her robes so she doesn’t trip and steps over the bench. Though they’re not supposed to take food from the Hall - an incident with ants this past summer - she steals an apple and a roll and puts both in her pockets.

If the Tranquil standing behind her table notices, he doesn’t say anything.

***

Distantly, through her prayers, Ariadne hears the heavy Chantry doors open and then close. She brushes her fingers across the open page; though the parchment has long smoothed over, she can almost feel the indentations of the words she transcribed years ago. She’d been praying silently until now, but quietly whispers this stanza to herself.

_I covered my face, fearful,_  
_But the Lady took my hands from my eyes,_  
_Saying, “Remember the fire. You must pass_  
_Through it alone to be forged anew.”_

The pew beside her creaks and she takes a deep breath in; her nose fills with a familiar faint scent of lavender. She exhales slowly before she opens her eyes. “Hi,” she whispers.

Lily smiles back at her. “I thought I’d find you here.”

“It’s familiar,” she says, closing the book. She smoothes her thumb over the soft leather cover before retying the twine that’s beginning to fray at the edges. The Chant is familiar, when so much isn’t. 

Lily draws her knees to her chest, resting her heels on the edge of the pew. She leans her cheek on her knees, head turned to face Ariadne. “What’s the rest of that verse?”

Smiling, Ariadne recites from memory. “ _Look! Look upon the Light so you may lead others here through the darkness, Blade of the Faith_.”

The altar candles flicker, casting shadows on the walls, but their glow falls on Lily’s skin, illuminating her cheeks and nose. Though this Chantry is small and silent, Ariadne’s mind fills in the choir practicing a soothing melody from Benedictions in the upper stalls. She sits quietly and watches the golden light shift across Lily’s face. 

Minutes pass before she leans in, slowly, and brushes her lips against Lily’s, just the barest of touches before she pulls away. 

Lily bites her lower lip, holding back a wide smile. Ariadne swallows, feeling a smile begin to grow across her own lips; she ducks her head, letting her hair fall and hide the blush rising to her cheeks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summerday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to bloomingcnidarians and thievinghippo for cheerleading and beta work!

Three years pass by in a blur. Ariadne spends most of her time in the library, amongst books and scrolls and maps - _research for research’s sake_ , she eventually decides when enough people ask her what she’s trying to find, what all her notes are for. She fills eight notebooks with her precise, elegant handwriting; Andraste, the Chant, Dissonant Verses, obscure writings by long-dead clerics, anything and everything she can find in the west wing of the sixth floor library. By the time she turns sixteen, she can reshelve her books and scrolls faster than any of the Tranquil whose job it is to put things back where they were found.  


But more than the library, more than putting together broken stanzas of Silence into a coherent verse, more than three separate sources confirming that Andraste loved birds as a child, the singular joy of those three years is Lily.

Their kiss in the Chantry has stood alone in a world of lingering hugs and hushed whispers late at night; whispers of jokes and rumors, of dreams and wishes, whispers that keep them up far beyond lights out. Ariadne’s never smiled so much in her life, never knew she could be so filled with happiness, so full she sometimes wonders if the brightness is too much and will explode from inside of her. 

Ariadne studies in the infirmary sometimes, when the books she’s reading can be taken from the library. She sits at the table, a space carefully cleared for her amidst crates of empty potion bottles, and reads while listening to Lily work. Always ready with a joke - she tells nothing but terrible puns about nugs for an entire year - she’s kind and relaxed with her patients, even the senior enchanters who are decades older. Joanie may be a precise, skilled healer, but Lily’s patients smile.

It only makes Ariadne adore her more.

Through silent agreement, the two of them have kept their feelings between themselves. No one else knows, there’s been nothing to see, and Ariadne thrills at their secret.

There hadn’t been any secrets at the orphanage, not with all the girls sleeping in the same room and the boys in their own room across the hall, and not with the Sisters patrolling the hallways at night. Ariadne hadn’t tried to keep any secrets then, save for the necklace she kept wrapped in a scarf inside her pillowcase, safe from the rest. Keeping personal secrets only ensured that the others would find them out, eventually, and use them against her. The necklace hangs proudly around her neck now.

But this is a secret, her and Lily, and it’s warm and familiar; there’s no fear behind the secret, and no concern of what will happen if they’re found out. Each time she tries to describe her feelings for Lily, put pen to paper and immortalize this golden ball of light inside of her, she comes up empty and the page in her journal stays blank save for a few ink drops. The page stays blank, but heat rises to her cheeks and she smiles so wide she thinks she might burst.

***

Ariadne wakes with the sun, and opens her eyes to clear sky, a warm ocean breeze, and a small sprig of tiny blue and yellow flowers on her nightstand.

 _Summerday_.

She quietly slides out of bed so as to not wake Lily asleep across the room, and tugs the covers up over the mattress, smoothing her palm over the pale green quilt. Lily spent her winter stitching quilts when a particular healing spell had gotten the better of her; for three months, she’d given up magic and taken up sewing instead. Though she made quilts for all her friends before she discovered the spell’s solution, only on Ariadne’s did she stitch a delicate floral pattern around the border. Ariadne traces the flowers on the corner, and then fluffs up her pillow before settling it on top. Clasping her fingers, she bows her head and kneels, whispering her morning prayers. 

Apotheosis this morning - _Glory! Glory! Glory! Hail to the Maker most High! Hail to Andraste, Prophet and liberator, Light of the world! Look upon our work, O Maker, and rejoice!_ \- and her smile grows as her whispered words dissolve into the air. Despite staying up hours past lights out last night talking with Lily, as she has nearly every night for the past three years, she’s well rested, excited.

 _Summerday_.

Her white dress has been hanging in the wardrobe for weeks. For two summers, she’s watched others cross the courtyard, barefoot and elegant in pure white, to receive their crown of flowers. This year, at almost sixteen, it’s her turn.

Summerday would mean more in the Chantry’s eyes if she weren’t a mage. Instead of crossing the Tower’s courtyard, she’d cross the Chantry hall; instead of her First Enchanter, she’d greet Revered Mother. The crown of flowers waiting for her across the courtyard would be made of dawn lotus, cultivated in the garden for just this purpose, not wildflowers picked from the coast that morning and lovingly braided together by her friends. She’d be announced as ready for marriage, even though she believed her future always lay in the Chantry.

And it had - until her fingertips produced sparks and the templars dragged her away. 

But Cora insists on the celebration anyway, despite that mages aren’t allowed to marry, and that being of age has little official meaning in a Circle. Ariadne’s glad; she’s always loved Summerday, loved watching the girls and boys in white, loved the flowers and the laughter. All holidays carry joy, even All Souls and saying goodbye to the dead, but Summerday - Summerday heralds sunshine and delight, long days and short nights ahead, fresh fruit and, in recent years living beside it, the Waking Sea finally warm enough to dip her bare feet in.

Summerday might be more meaningful, more important, if she weren’t a mage. But it wouldn’t be as fun. There wouldn’t be fireworks and dancing, there wouldn’t be joyful music carrying on well into the night - it’d be a somber celebration, subdued. Her third Summerday at the Tower, and though she’s kept a tight rein on her magic - watched quietly as her friends produce walls of ice and wild storms, watched as they heal cuts with a wave of their hand and conjure spirits from the Fade - she no longer misses waking with the Chantry bells that always rang in Summerday at the orphanage.

She finishes her prayers and changes from her sleep clothes into her robes. The dress will come later, in the afternoon, and for now she’s needed downstairs to help hang the garland she spent the past week painstakingly twisting and weaving. She pauses at the door and turns, a small smile quirking at her lips as Lily digs under her own blankets and presses a pillow over her eyes. In the years Ariadne’s known her, Lily has never once pleasantly greeted a morning. 

She and Lily are the only ones left in the room, and there haven’t been any young apprentice girls recently to fill the empty beds; the others have passed their Harrowings and moved to different quarters across the Tower. Their secret’s been easy to keep as of late, without worry of keeping someone else awake with their whispers, and without need to pretend that lights out also means go to sleep.

Ariadne watches Lily flop over onto her stomach, smushing her face into her pillow in adamant refusal to acknowledge the sun in her eyes. She decides against waking Lily, allowing her as much sleep as she wants, and slips into the hall.

***

The sun is warm, almost hot, on Ariadne’s shoulders. The two boys are wearing identical white trousers and tunics, but all three girls wear different dresses. Where Lily’s delicate cap sleeves flutter in the wind, Ariadne’s shoulders are bared, her dress tied in a halter behind her neck. It’s strange not to be in robes after three years of almost nothing but; strange, but freeing and for once, she isn’t uncomfortable underneath the sun. The soft, simple cotton dress - tailored to perfectly fit her tall frame - hits just at her knees; the skirt fans out when she twirls, which she did so many times while getting ready that she made herself dizzy and tumbled straight into Lily’s arms.

Mari tugs at her own dress, fussing with the strap over her left shoulder that refuses to stay up while Lily tugs the laces tighter in the back.

“I can’t breathe,” Mari complains.

“Yes you can,” Lily says, “it’s not that tight.” She ties off the laces in a bow. “See, now you don’t look like you’re wearing an empty sack of potatoes.”

Ariadne snorts, turning her laughter into a half-believable cough.

Mari narrows her eyes. Her frown deepens the scar over her eye, making her look even angrier than usual. But Mari’s glares have no bite behind them among friends, even if she does probably have a knife hidden in a garter beneath her dress.

“Stupid tradition,” Mari scoffs as Cora starts to speak.

“There’ll be food afterward,” Ariadne tells her. She puts her hands on Mari’s shoulders and turns her around so she’s facing the courtyard. “Now remember, don’t stab the cleric,” she whispers, giving Mari a gentle push forward when Cora calls her name.

“Thanks for the advice,” Mari hisses. She tugs at her dress, still trying to get it to settle right around her hips even as she walks across the grass.

The rest of the Tower has gathered on either side of the courtyard, forming a pathway in the middle; no mage or templar or Tranquil remains inside for the celebration.

Lily stands next to Ariadne. “Amazing we let her out in public.” She looks at Ariadne, and then squints up at the sun. “Did you put on the sun lotion that Joanie gave you?”

Ariadne nods. Though her shoulders are starting to redden in the sun, they won’t burn like the back of her neck did last year; the vandal aria in the lotion envelops her in a soft scent of honey. She squints in the sun and watches Samuel follow Mari’s path across the courtyard. He walks confidently, back ramrod straight and chin high and proud, and she supposes he’s earned it; his wall of flame last week wasn’t tall, she could step over it, but it slid strong and hot across the floor like they all slid on the ice this past winter. “For having fire magic,” she says, turning back to Lily, “I think I should be immune to sunburn.” 

Lily smiles and steps forward; she’s next. “I don’t think that’s how it works.” She sneaks a glance back at Ariadne when she’s halfway across the courtyard and winks.

Ariadne returns the wink with a smile and scans the crowd. Every face is familiar. Three years ago, every face was new and strange and terrifying. Now they are her friends and mentors and peers, and she knows everyone’s name. She knows more than their names. Quentin, with his ice mine that holds so much promise for the half a breath it freezes together before melting into a puddle. Lucy, the Tranquil who shelves the books in the library Ariadne spends so much time in. Ruth and Octavia, who keep the infirmary stocked for every emergency, even though they mostly treat headaches and sniffles. Liselle and Ferdinand, templars that teach the mages how to defend themselves without magic. Emelie, with the sunbursts on her hands, who still smiles every time she passes Ariadne in the hallway.

She knows some better than others, but she knows everyone.

Lily bows her head, and Cora says something Ariadne cannot make out from this far away. When she finishes, Cora places a crown of purple flowers on Lily’s head. With a grin, Lily steps aside, standing in front of a row of templars while Cora calls Quentin’s name.

Ariadne is last and she fidgets, standing alone. But then she hears her name, clear and bright across the field, and she begins to walk. Careful, so she doesn’t trip, she takes comfortable steps, feeling the grass tickle her toes. Wind blows through her hair, let down in loose, wavy curls for just this occasion. Warm sun on her cheeks, she keeps her head up until she reaches Cora and then bows her head like Lily and the others.

“Ariadne,” Cora says quietly, just for her, “today you stand before us no longer a girl, but a woman. You have grown strong in the years that I’ve known you, and a faithful companion to those who call you a friend. I am proud that you are one of my mages, and have no doubts that you will one day change the world.” She places the woven crown of white flowers upon Ariadne’s head and hooks her finger under Ariadne’s chin, raising her up. “Welcome,” she says, and presses a kiss to Ariadne’s forehead. 

Though Ariadne knows that there was no magic in the ceremony, she feels a lightness inside of her, a faint comfortable rush of, finally, _belonging_.

Ariadne steps aside and falls into line beside Lily. Cora addresses the crowd, but Ariadne doesn’t hear any of her words. Her world narrows to her right hand, and Lily’s left hand that grasps it, hidden from the crowd by the folds of their dresses. Lily’s fingers are soft, like always, but squeeze a little tighter, a little longer than usual. Ariadne squeezes back, and lets her thumb brush against Lily’s palm. A warm tingling begins at her fingertips and rises through her fingers and palm, traveling up her arm and settling in her chest. 

She glances beside her. Lily’s cheeks are flushed pink, and her lips twist in an attempt to curtail a smile.

Cora claps her hands together, signaling the end of the ceremony and the beginning of the festivities. Ariadne bumps her hip against Lily’s as the divided crowd merges into one, scattering about the field for music and dancing before the bonfire and fireworks of the evening. 

Lily looks at Ariadne and grins. She lifts up on her toes and presses her lips to Ariadne’s cheek before dragging her into the crowd.

***

The dandelion wine warms her veins. She’s only had two slow glasses, but the wine sets her entire body abuzz. Standing slightly away from the main crowd - away from the music and the dancing and the food, needing a small break for a moment - she watches her friends, her family. Emelie and Octavia dance closer together than a templar and a mage should, fingers lingering on shoulders and arms long after the song finishes. Sarah and Daniel flirt back and forth by the wine, long given up on their games and given into each other. Ariadne smiles as Joanie rolls their eyes at the two, now in friendly affection instead of annoyance, and walks past Ruth and Arif, whose fingertips brush against each other between songs.

When she sees Cora and Edward on opposite sides of the courtyard, First Enchanter and Knight Commander holding each other’s gaze in a comfortable, established silence as a softness settles over their posture, Ariadne begins to wonder if she and Lily need to remain a secret after all. 

As the music starts up again, Ariadne turns to watch the sun set over the ocean. She sips at the last of her wine and watches the sky turn brilliant pink and gold and purple, and she nearly doesn’t notice Lily coming up beside her. She looks down, suddenly aware that Lily only comes up to her shoulders. Slightly fuzzy-brained with wine, she wonders when that happened - they must have stood next to each other countless times before now, and she doesn’t remember being quite so tall - and opens her mouth to say something.

But Lily grasps her hand before she can say anything, and tugs Ariadne further away from the crowd. Ariadne stumbles, but with Lily’s hand tight in hers she easily catches her footing and keeps up. Their white dresses tangle around their legs as they run, catching wind and grass as they laugh and chase each other across the courtyard. Lily pulls her behind the ancient oak tree near the rocks beside the sea, out of sight of the others. 

Ariadne stills, a smile upon her lips as Lily looks up at her, crown of flowers still perched upon her head.

Lily reaches up and cups Ariadne’s cheeks. Her fingertips are warm and delicate on Ariadne’s skin, her touch tender and sweet. Ariadne’s world slows and focuses only to the two of them. Lily lifts up on her toes and presses her berry-stained lips to Ariadne’s. The kiss is soft but full of promise, of emotions and feelings too big for words, of everything Lily hasn’t said in their talks late at night.

Ariadne wraps her arms around Lily, keeping one hand low on her back and sliding the other up to tangle in Lily’s hair, and holds her close. She deepens the kiss, slipping her tongue past Lily’s lips. The salty ocean air swirls around them and Ariadne’s breath catches in her throat as Lily presses against her. 

She breaks the kiss, overwhelmed with the feelings surging in her veins, and rests her forehead against Lily’s. Her lips, swollen from kissing, turn upward in a smile and a quiet laugh. Lily starts to laugh with her, eventually pulling away so she can lean her head on Ariadne’s shoulder. Ariadne kisses Lily’s temple as the sun dips below the horizon. She wants to kiss Lily again, and again, and never stop. They have three years to make up for.

Behind them on the lawn, Michael lights the bonfire with a snap of his fingers. The shouts of joy and excitement cause Lily to lift her head. Ariadne takes the opportunity and steals another kiss - light and quick this time, filled with promises for later - before she steps away. She drops her hand down to Lily’s, twining their fingers together. They really should get back to the party, but there’s no way to hide what they’ve been doing.

Ariadne finds herself not caring. They’ve been a secret for three years, and she wants more than hugs hidden in shadow and late nights talking magic and dreams. And from the way Lily’s looking up at her, eyes dark and sparkling and a mischievous smile on her lips, Lily feels the same way. 

They step around the tree together, hands still clasped at their sides, and walk back to the center of the courtyard, to the fire and food and music. They have the whole night left for more, the whole night and all the nights after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check out the [absolutely lovely Ariadne/Lily art from that last scene](http://dearophelia.tumblr.com/post/138636381247/ariadne-and-lily-from-joy-cometh-in-the-morning) done by bloomingcnidarians.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Harrowing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to thievinghippo and theherocomplex for wonderful and helpful beta work, and to bloomingcnidarians for being the greatest cheerleader I could ever hope for.

Ariadne sighs and shifts the massive book across the table. She’s about to lose the last of the late autumn sunlight, but candles aren’t wise around books this rare, and she’s almost finished copying the last verse she needs. Then the book - _The Life and Trials of Ser Tad,_ an extremely dull affair in general but one that contains several verses of Silence she’s never seen before, not even in three different copies of the Dissonant Verses - can go back on its top shelf with the cobwebs and she can study the text properly, with parchment and candlelight and not quite so many dead spiders between the pages.

“You know, there’s a perfectly good fiction shelf in the next room. Twelve of them, actually.”

Ariadne rushes to finish the last word just as the sun slips away from the window. She looks up from her parchment and smiles at Lily. Four months since Summerday, four months of nights, and still there’s a soft, enveloping warmth in her chest whenever she sees Lily. 

“And I suppose you’ve read them all.” She closes the book and easily heaves it onto a stack for the Tranquil to reshelve. Her muscles don’t even burn with the effort, and the book lands with a dusty thud. Her resolution not to practice magic left a lot of spare time for combat training over the past three years, building her body into something strong and reliable, not the weak, small girl who left the Chantry in tears.

“One or two.” Lily shrugs in a way that means considerably more than just one or two, and hops off the step down into the alcove to lean against a stone column. “Davinia Merryweather has an excellent romance serial. Two women in the Orlesian Court. Masks, intrigue, stolen kisses in shadowed staircases. Mari heard she’s working on a sequel.”

“I hope it lives up to your expectations,” Ariadne says with a friendly smile, teasing with her disinterest.

Lily groans, a small frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “You are _maddening_ sometimes.”

Ariadne grins and presses Lily up against the column. She ducks her head to give Lily a quick kiss. They saw each other at lunch, only a few hours ago, and last touched at breakfast - hands clasped underneath the table, pretending it wasn’t obvious that they were both eating with one hand. But even though it’s been a matter of hours, Ariadne’s missed the touch of Lily’s skin beneath her fingers, the taste of her lips on hers. “And yet, here you are.”

“Here I am,” Lily repeats quietly. She runs her fingers through Ariadne’s hair, finally a brilliant red after months of Mari’s cosmetic spell trials.

“I assume you didn’t come all the way up here to harass me about my reading materials.” This kind of privacy is hard to find in the Circle, even with templars that look the other way more often than not, especially now that Lily’s passed her Harrowing and moved into the mage quarters and two younger apprentices have taken her place. The torches on the walls burn bright in the dusklight, casting golden shadows over Lily. Her cheeks glow in the firelight, and Ariadne kisses her again.

Lily laughs, a quiet chuckle that normally never fails to bring a small to Ariadne’s lips - but there’s hesitation behind it this time, and Ariadne’s smile starts, but doesn’t finish.

Lily drops her hand down to Ariadne’s, catches her fingers and gently rubs her thumb into Ariadne’s palm. “As much as I’d like to say that’s why I came up here,” she trails off and the sparkle in her eyes dulls. “I overheard Cora and Edward talking.”

Ariadne looks away and takes a step back. The warmth in her chest gives way to a cold knot of dread in her stomach. She wonders if it wouldn’t be better not knowing that her Harrowing is tonight; she wouldn’t spend the next hours worrying - she’d just be woken by templars and taken up to the Chamber.

“It’s not that bad,” Lily says quickly, trying to reassure her, and gives Ariadne’s hand a brief squeeze. “You go to sleep, you yell at a demon, wake up, templars are suitably impressed and give you a fancy ring, you steal Jorah’s flask, and go have a drink out on the balcony.” She shrugs, like it wasn’t the hardest trial of her life thus far.

“Wait. You passed your Harrowing by _yelling_ at the demon?” This isn’t precisely surprising - Lily would much rather use words than spells - but Lily hadn’t told her anything about her Harrowing, other than she’d passed and would prefer not talk about it, and Ariadne had assumed there was some spellwork or fighting involved. At the very least, she’d expected more difficulty than could be overcome by a stern talking to.

Lily nods. “Sloth demon. Told it to get off its rear and make something of its life. I felt a little bad.”

Ariadne raises an eyebrow, still not quite convinced this evening’s trial will go as smoothly.

“Look, Margaret had a despair demon, spent two hours telling it every dirty tavern joke she knows. It’s not always the doom and brimstone everyone makes it out to be. Ari, you’ll be fine.”

Ariadne manages a weak smile for Lily, but doesn’t feel it. Lily’s confidence in her will have to be enough for the both of them. She keeps hold of Lily’s hand all the way down the stairs.

***

Cold. The little, empty lyrium bottle falls from her fingers and all she feels is frigid, brutal, biting _cold_. 

A wave of nausea overwhelms her as the lyrium peaks, strong and hard. She barely keeps down the glass of water the templars gave her with the lyrium draught. She stumbles, feels bile rise through her chest and burn at the back of her throat.

But when she falls, her knees don’t slam into the stone floor. Instead, she falls and falls and _falls_ , loses track of _up_ and _down_ , falls through the darkness and the cold for an eternity until she lands on her back in a snowbank. After a deep breath, certain she isn’t going to start falling again, she carefully opens her eyes.

Stars, bright and twinkling, partially hidden behind the thick haze of smoke.

The world rushes into focus so quickly she barely has time to roll over before she throws up into the snow. Coughing, she sits up onto her knees and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

People shouting, throwing buckets of water onto the burning house. 

She doesn’t know how, but she knows this house. She knows the flaming curtains were once blue, and the garden out front was overflowing with daisies in spring, and if everything was just right - sunlight would gleam through the little round window up top and cast rainbows across the walls of a tiny bedroom that held a stuffed nug missing one button eye. She knows all this, and she doesn’t, like it was in a half-remembered book someone once told her about.

Flames flick upward from the scorched skeleton of a home, brilliant orange-yellow reaching into the inky sky. Smoke billows outward from the blackened wood beams and surrounds her, catching in her nose and throat. She goes completely still when she hears the screaming.

She should know those voices, those people screaming for help. They’re _almost_ familiar. Hazy memories tug at her but she can’t sharpen them, can’t place the voices with faces. A strange sadness settles across her shoulders when she realizes she has no idea who the people trapped inside the half-remembered house are.

A high-pitched, piercing unearthly shriek grates down her spine. Another shriek, and then another. Ariadne covers her ears, futilely trying to muffle the sounds. The screams from inside the burning house grow louder and pitch downward and darker as something - an undeniable _presence_ \- encroaches closer. They turn from something small and dying into something big and very much alive, and looking for _her_.

Ariadne squeezes her eyes shut and presses her hands tighter against her ears, and feels the world start to spin around her again. But this time she doesn’t fall into snow, she keeps spinning and spinning and it’s never going to stop, the spinning or the screaming or the scalding heat or the thing behind her, and she’s going to be sick again if she can’t stop it but there’s nothing to hold onto.

The shrieking abruptly stops, and she opens her eyes.

It’s closed in around her. Dark and murky, a shroud of hazy figures shifts in a perfect circle surrounding her little snowbank. Her eyes slide over the pieces, trying to make sense of what she sees, form it into something she understands, something she _recognizes_. She makes the mistake of looking directly at one, where its eyes should be, and it looms up over her, taller, bigger, _darker_ than the rest, and she scrambles backward. Swirling insubstantial shadows form the vague shape of a person, and it screams and shoots freezing tendrils into her heart. The chill races down her bones, aching and sharp.

It suddenly yanks the cold from her, leaving her dizzy and empty. Almost too warm now without the cold inside of her, she retches and coughs as the figures slide closer, reaching out to her with too-long fingers. Thick, black liquid drips from the fingers, hissing and spitting as it hits the snow. Ariadne clenches her jaw and stares straight ahead, watching the flickering darkness where she thinks one creature ends and another begins, waiting.

She spies a gap in the shadows just before they close in too tight. Without hesitating, she throws herself forward through the thin space. The shapes twist around themselves, pulling together into one shrieking, howling mass that slices at her heels as she sprints into the woods. She sprints, runs past the house engulfed in flames, runs past the voices she doesn’t know, runs past the silent faceless neighbors, ignores the tears stinging her cheeks and doesn’t look back.

When the blistering heat of the house fire fades, Ariadne slows and dares a look behind her. The shadows have pulled away, lurking around the edges. She slows her pace to a walk, trying to catch her breath.

She shivers, wraps her arms around herself and rubs her hands over her bare arms; the robes she wore in the Harrowing chamber are gone, replaced with a thin sleeveless tunic and leggings. She doesn’t know these woods, wasn’t old enough to learn them, and she’s hopelessly turned around. The pale moonlight casts only stark, skeleton shadows through the trees, doesn’t provide enough light to find a direction. She takes a deep breath, and chokes as the cold air burns her throat, dry as sand. She stops and doubles over, coughing.

With careful breathing, she manages to stop coughing, though her throat’s scraped raw and if she breathes too deeply she’ll start again. She stands up and wipes at her eyes and looks around for any hint of direction. She finds a space between the trees larger than the rest and walks toward it, hoping it leads out of the woods instead of dragging her deeper. Ravens squawk and flutter angrily into the air, breaking the silence of the forest and sending her heart pounding.

“You don’t belong here,” an almost-human voice whispers beside her ear.

She jumps and looks around, frantically looking for the source of the voice.

“You don’t belong anywhere,” a growl by her other ear, echoing with too many voices. 

She jerks away from the voice, swatting at the space by her ear. She stumbles in the snow but keeps her footing, and starts to run again. Tree branches snap against her and cut into her skin, and thin lines of blood drip down her arms.

“Stupid little Chantry girl.” All the voices swirl around her, too close and far away all at once.

A sob rises in her throat and she runs harder, tripping over rocks and roots. Twitching shadows run alongside her, growing and billowing around her in all directions except the way she’s running. She wants to run in another direction, away from where the shadows _want_ her to run - anywhere would be better, _safer_ , than where they want her to go - but the deep, impenetrable darkness beyond the shadows pulls terror up through her veins. The voices strengthen, whispering, indistinct from each other; all of them hateful, malicious. 

Her foot catches on a root and she sprawls forward, falling on her hands and knees into the sharp ice-covered snow. The ice snaps, scraping her wrists and palms as she breaks her fall.

“Should’ve died with your parents in that fire,” a new voice says, hoarse and sickly.

Something skitters across the ice behind her and the shadows close in again, the same flickering almost-people but darker, deeper. Fire erupts around her, trapping her here in the freezing woods with the shadows and the useless faceless people behind them.

Terrified, she stumbles to her feet and steps into the swirling dark shadows, there’s no way out anymore but she can’t stay here with the fire and oily darkness. Her stomach roils again when she touches the shadows. Despite the prickling pain in her head, she walks forward, dizzy and nauseous, looking for a way out. Her vision blurs - _she is going to die here in this forest and there is nothing she can do about it_ \- and she almost doesn’t see the light. 

A tiny point of bright, warm, white light, pushing against the shadows.

“Ariadne!” the light calls her name.

She knows that voice immediately. _Wake up, Ariadne._ The words surface in her mind from the depths of her memory - she’s heard this voice before. She remembers it. She only half-remembers the house, and she doesn’t remember the people inside, but she remembers the spark and she remembers the voice. It was urgent then, too. So urgent the stuffed nug with its one button eye was left behind on the bed, forgotten, to burn. 

“Fight, Ariadne!” it shouts again, caring and strong.

The shadows churn and descend upon the light, angrily chasing it away. The little light disappears, leaving her alone again in the darkness, but it was enough. The spark saved her once, and it came to save her again. Though the tiny bright light is gone, swallowed by the shadows, a steady calm starts to flow over her.

Ariadne stands still on shaky legs and, with nothing left to lose, she snaps her fingers. Sparks pop out of the air and fall into her hands. Glowing bright and strong, the sparks stand brilliant against the darkness. She inhales abruptly, shocked at her own power, and nearly drops the precious sparks. They crackle against her skin, harmless to her but warm and somehow comforting. The sparks pop as they split into two, and then four, then eight, chasing each other in her open palms.

“Worthless Chantry orphan, playing at being a mage, nobody wants you,” the voices taunt.

She feels the fury rising up inside of her, shoving out the last remnants of fear. Hot, liquid anger floods her veins, and burning rage fortifies her bones as she straightens her spine. The home she’s found in the Circle is not a lie, and her friends are not a lie. 

_Lily_ is not a lie, that she’s sure of more than anything.

The sparks burst into flames held in her hands. She blinks past the migraine and the sickness and closes her eyes, holds onto the brief memory of the tiny white light in the shadows. Heat settles against her skin, replacing the cold with something far more familiar. Her numb fingertips start to warm, and her teeth stop chattering. She’s never cold, except when she’s scared. And she isn’t scared now, not anymore, she’s angry and strong - Lily’s soft fingertips on her cheek, Lily’s smile in the morning, _Lily is not a lie_ \- and the fire blazing in her palms came from _inside of her_.

“Scared little girl spent years reading, too afraid to be magic. Now what’s she going to do?” They’re hungry now.

Ariadne bares her teeth and opens her eyes, seething as the shadows swarm tightly around her. An angry growl rises in her throat and the flames grow brighter in her palms. They burn taller, stronger, with a brilliant orange light that she begins to not only see but _feel_. Warm - no, _hot_ \- bright light radiates out from her chest, down her arms to her hands to the flames. 

_I will not die here in this forest amongst these shadows._

“You’re no match for us,” the voices hiss triumphantly.

With a roar, she whirls around and hurls her fire into theirs.

***

The wailing and screaming shadows chase her even into wakefulness, and she wakes up on the Harrowing Chamber’s floor. She scrambles backward across the cold stones, away from the templars standing guard above her. Her hands leave sweaty palmprints on the black stones.

“Congratulations,” Edward says, stepping forward through the templars. “You passed.” There’s a tightness to Edward’s voice that she doesn’t quite understand, but the pride in his eyes and smile eclipses everything else.

Ariadne blinks at him, but looks down and stares at the floor, too exhausted to try to understand his tone. She takes two deep breaths and then stands carefully, and doesn’t take the hand he extends toward her. Though nausea rolls through her, threatening to send her to her knees again, she takes slow, even breaths and keeps it at bay. 

He gives her a ring, the thin band of silver that identifies her as a full mage, no longer an apprentice. She’d expected more ceremony out of it, but she’s too tired to mind; she silently slides the ring onto her thumb. Exhaustion tugs at the edges of her adrenaline-fueled mind, and she straightens her shoulders. 

Liselle pushes her hood back and tries to help, offering Ariadne a steadying arm to lean against, but Ariadne walks past them all and strides silently out of the Chamber toward the dormitory.

Lily’s awake, waiting for her, reading by a single candle so as to not disturb the sleeping apprentices. She sits up with a loud sigh of relief. “How was it?” she whispers, and pushes her glasses up atop her head. 

Ariadne blinks at her. Lily’s room is up one floor. “What are you doing here?” 

“Cora thought you might want a friend afterward. How did it go?”

Ariadne quickly changes into her nightclothes, needing to be out of the sweaty robes she wore in the chamber. Her hands shake as she carefully pours herself a cup of water. Though her legs are as shaky as her hands, she makes it safely to the edge of her bed without spilling, and sits down. She wonders about the spark, the little light of hope that called her name.

“Ari?” Lily asks gently, a hint of worry in her furrowed brow.

Ariadne looks up from her faint reflection in her cup. “I didn’t get to tell any demons dirty jokes,” she says, trying to keep her voice light, though she largely fails. Maybe she’ll tell Lily about the fear demon someday, about how she only truly found her magic when she was properly terrified, convinced she was going to die; maybe she’ll tell her about the spark, and the strength it gave her with only a few words. 

But not tonight - tonight she wants to lie down and close her eyes and not think too much about why she had to face a fear demon when her friends had pride or despair or sloth. She slowly finishes her water and sets the empty cup aside. “I’m going to sleep.” She lies down on her side atop the covers and tucks her hands beneath her cheek.

She doubts she’ll sleep at all, not with her unsettled stomach and pounding head, and certainly not with the shrieking shadows echoing through her mind and fire that erupts behind her closed eyelids. But she can lie still in the darkness with the cool spring air blowing through the window, listening to the waves crashing outside, and run her thumb across the band of lyrium in the ring on her thumb.

“Okay.” Though her voice is laced with concern, Lily doesn’t push Ariadne, just puts her glasses and book on the nightstand and blows out the candle. “I’m right here if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” Ariadne whispers gratefully, and stares out the window at the starry night sky. So many bright lights.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of a Harrowing, intrigue, and a field trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! Thanks for sticking with me while I took a brief break to deal with life- and work-related chaos. 
> 
> As per usual, thanks to thievinghippo for brilliant beta work (this chapter was six hot messes on top of a barbecue pit until she got her hands on it and sorted me out), and bloomingcnidarians for being the greatest cheerleader a girl could ask for.

“Did you order Lydia to summon the fear demon?” Edward asks the moment the door to Cora’s quarters clicks shut behind him. He’s been fuming the whole way down the stairs from the chamber, barely able to conceal his anger from his templars. Thirty-five years as a full templar, twenty of them overseeing Harrowings, and he’s learned how to tell which demon a mage faced without them saying a word. He’s only seen the results of fear demons a handful of times, and none have walked out of the chamber alive, until tonight. 

Cora looks up from her book and takes her glasses off. She folds them and carefully sets them aside on her nightstand. “Yes.” She places the scrap of fabric between the pages, and closes her book.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He begins to take off his armor, stacking it carefully on the rack beside the wardrobe. They may be together eighteen years now, but he’s still Knight Commander and she’s still First Enchanter, and they have a joint responsibility to those in their tower.

She watches him unlatch his armor, studying his hands. “So you could try to talk me out of it?”

He shoves his chest plate into its place with more force than is strictly necessary. The metal clangs harshly against the rack. “Yes. She’s _seventeen_ , Cora, and scared of her magic as it was. That was irresponsible and reckless and -”

“She survived, did she not?” Calmly, Cora swiftly cuts him off before he can continue the list of words he’d developed on his way here.

Edward pauses in his movements and stares at her over his shoulder. Back ramrod straight, hands folded in her lap atop the covers, she raises her left eyebrow. It’s almost a challenge, daring him to question her further. 

Gritting his teeth against all the words he wants to say but won’t - objections and accusations more fit for one of their offices and morning’s light than their bedchamber and starlight - and finishes removing his armor. He ducks around the corner to change out of his gambeson and leggings and into his sleep clothes. Normally he wouldn’t bother with the corner, but he is _not_ having this discussion while undressing in front of her. “Yes,” he says, returning to the main chamber. Cora moves aside, but he’s not ready to come to bed yet. 

Ariadne’s survival is the point, but isn’t the point all the same. Harrowings are awful things already - he’s loathe to be complicit in making the ritual _worse_. He crosses his arms over his chest. “But if she hadn’t, you’d never know if she may’ve survived against a lesser demon.”

Cora sighs and leans back against the pillows. She stares straight ahead, at the stone wall and the dancing shadows cast upon it by candles in the window. “Fear is a strange thing, Edward. It has ways of bringing to light parts of us that pride, or even desire, cannot.”

He uncrosses his arms and takes a deep breath to keep from actually _seething_. This fight may be more appropriate for daytime and an official office, but his anger is immediate and present and threatening to turn into fury. “Why not a terror demon, then? Cora, the girl has been frightened of her magic since the day she arrived.” He draws his voice from deep in his chest, loud and forceful, but still a half-step away from shouting. “You had no idea she could survive on her own against a bloody _fear demon_. Most senior enchanters couldn’t manage that, and what’s worse is that you know it.”

“And yet she survived,” Cora says, sitting up straight again and matching him for volume. She turns, slowly, and levels a glare at him, but there’s a gentleness to the small wrinkles around her eyes that keeps the glare from being angry.

Instead, he recognizes the glare for what it is: a request, nearly a plea, to stop asking for what she isn’t ready to tell him. He backs down, but has one last thought he’s unwilling to keep silenced tonight. “She’s a child, Cora. You risked her life on…” he shakes his head, “wishful thinking. I don’t know what games you and your friends are plotting, but Ariadne is a _child_. Leave her out of your plans.”

Cora holds his gaze and presses her lips together, neither acknowledging nor disputing his words. 

Edward sighs. Better silence than a lie. He looks down at the burgundy rug below his feet and then back up at Cora. She’s still watching him, unflinching. With a nod, he steps toward the bed, kneeling on the mattress when she pulls the blankets back for him.

She turns away to place her book beside her glasses, but he gently hooks his finger under her chin, slowly turning her back to look at him.

“You _will_ talk to me beforehand the next time you do something like this.” When she takes a breath, he shakes his head, silencing any protest or agreement until he’s finished. “If for no other reason than allowing me to choose a guard more suitable for the demon.” He lowers his voice and her dark brown eyes lock onto his. As much as Cora cares for her mages, he cares the same for his templars. “It wasn’t only Ariadne’s life you risked tonight.” 

She inhales softly, tilts her head just slightly, and nods. “Yes.”

Edward nods and kisses her before he lies down.

Cora puts her book aside and waves her hand; the candles around the room extinguish. He feels her settle beside him, but he’s not anywhere near sleep. He doubts she is either.

“Cora?” He asks, after minutes pass with only the gentle crash of the waves below to fill the silence.

“Yes?”

“You promised to tell me what you were planning.”

Silence, for a moment. And then, “There’s nothing to tell, yet.”

“Alright.” Maybe it wasn’t a lie. He hopes it wasn’t. But she sent Octavia to Wycome to watch their vote for First Enchanter, and orchestrated a fear demon for Ostwick’s weakest and most inexperienced apprentice, and he’s seen more ravens from Hercinia in the last month than he has in years. There may not be much to tell yet, but he very much doubts that there’s _nothing_.

***

Two weeks later, Cora stands on the grass outside the tower, watching Ariadne practice from afar. The girl’s movements are awkward, staccato as she focuses more on how to move her staff than the power she’s trying to channel from it. Ariadne’s accustomed to a staff, but only for physical combat - channeling mana for a spell requires a vastly different mindset than a defensive block and an offensive sweep. She casts her spells academically, according to instructions and diagrams. But she shows promise, managing a small immolate burst that explodes on impact when it hits the stone target in front of her. With practice, Cora has no doubt that Ariadne’s spellwork will become as smooth as her fighting style. 

Cora smiles wryly. It’s only two weeks since Ariadne’s Harrowing, after all. She really should give Ariadne more credit.

A raven circles three times overhead before making its descent. It begins to shift and grow as it descends, feathers dissolving back into skin as it lands softly on two bare human feet. Octavia grimaces and cracks her neck; Cora hands the enchanter the folded robes she’d carried outside.

“The vote?” Cora asks without pretense once Octavia’s dressed. Shapeshifting is an exhausting branch of magic, and she needs answers before Octavia falls asleep for the next day and a half.

Octavia suppresses a yawn. “As you wanted. Gregoria won by a significant majority.”

Cora exhales slowly through pursed lips. “Good. Thank you for going. I know it wasn’t the safest thing I’ve asked of you.”

Nodding, Octavia tries to suppress another yawn and fails. “I heard more than a few rumors of blood magic.”

“I’m sure you did,” Cora says, careful to keep her voice even. “We knew the Chantry wasn’t going to like Gregoria in power, but they can’t contradict the Circle’s vote. And we need her there.” She blinks out of her introspection and turns to Octavia. “You should get some sleep.”

“I was planning on it.”

Cora catches Octavia’s hand before she’s out of reach and holds it between hers for a moment, giving the other woman a gentle squeeze of gratitude before letting her go. Octavia smiles and gives her First Enchanter another small nod before heading inside.

Cora turns her attentions back to Ariadne, who had stopped her practice to watch when Octavia shifted back from a raven. With a slight inhale, Cora strides across the grass to Ariadne. She has an offer, one she hopes benefits them all, as well as a reminder of the rules.

She makes it a point not to ask about Harrowings. She asks the mage a few days later how they’re feeling, just enough to make it clear that they can approach her if they need to talk further. Some do, some don’t. Ariadne claimed that she was fine, now that the lyrium nausea had worn off, but the lie was obvious; even if Ariadne’s eyes hadn’t darted everywhere avoiding Cora’s gaze, and even if her voice hadn’t sped up and pitched slightly higher than normal, the sudden interest in practical magic gave her away. Ariadne’s thrown herself into magical studies with as much dedication and determination as she studies the Chant and whatever texts she finds about it in the library.

But she’s not told Cora what she experienced in the Fade, and neither will Cora pry. It was enough, for both of them, and that is what matters.

***

Ariadne rubs the back of her hand against her forehead, wiping the sweat from her brow. “Did Octavia just…?” She’s read about shapeshifting, but reading in no way prepared her for _seeing_. A raven flew in from the clouds, and landed as a woman without even missing a step. Every day now, it seems she finds yet another thing that makes magic wonderful.

Cora nods with a small smile. “Yes. She was away on an errand for me. Flying was the easiest way to get there.”

Opening her mouth, Ariadne intends to ask how that works with a templar escort, but her mind rapidly switches gears when she recognizes that Cora’s in full First Enchanter robes, yet she’s standing in leggings and a sleeveless tunic, very much out of uniform. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes, “I know we’re supposed to be in our robes at all times out of our rooms. But it’s so hot around the fire.” She gestures to her robes, dark blue fabric she’d draped over a bench beside the practice area. At least she started out the hour dressed properly.

“Not to mention loose sleeves are unwise around flames.” Cora’s smile widens. “That rule comes from the Chantry, and they don’t always have an eye toward practicality. You’re perfectly decent, don’t worry. Though,” she pauses, and the smile disappears, “you are not supposed to be out here alone.” She tilts her head, raising her chin slightly.

It isn’t quite a reprimand, but Cora’s words are close enough to a scold that Ariadne grimaces. She hadn’t meant to push on the boundaries of _any_ rules today - or ever - yet she’s bent one and broken another. She’d only meant to practice. “It was raining earlier and I didn’t get to practice as much in lessons. I almost had it at the end, I only needed another hour.” The only thing that stops her rambling excuses from continuing is a gentle wave of Cora’s hand.

“I understand,” Cora says, “and I appreciate your initiative, but you do need either an enchanter or a templar out here with you for supervision.” She waits for Ariadne to nod before she continues.. “It’s partly to appease the Chantry and the templars, but also,” she softens her voice, “you’ve come a long way in two weeks, but it has only been two weeks.”

“It won’t happen again,” Ariadne promises.

“Good,” Cora says.

Assuming the discussion to be over, Ariadne takes a step away toward her robes. But Cora’s voice stops her.

“I’m going to Val Royeaux next week; I have business at the White Spire. Would you like to come along?”

She turns around to face her First Enchanter again and blinks at the older woman in the dying light. “Of course,” she says, as soon as her thoughts catch up with the moment. Of all the mages to invite, and Cora chooses her, the girl who refused to touch magic at all until a fear demon nearly killed her. “But if you don’t mind me asking…”

“Why you and not someone senior?” At Ariadne’s nod, she continues. “It is customary to bring a small entourage of mages from their own Circle when First Enchanters visit the White Spire. Most bring the same three Senior Enchanters every time they visit, but I prefer to give everyone a chance to see the Spire. Plus,” she says, and the corners of her mouth quirk upward, “I know one of the clerics at the Grand Cathedral and have arranged for you to tour the Archives, if you wish.”

Ariadne eyes widen and she breaks into a grin. She’s seen drawings and paintings of the Grand Cathedral, of course, but never dreamed she’d get to see it in person once she arrived at the Circle. And the _Archives_ \- Ostwick’s library is incredible compared to the paltry selection she had at the Chantry, but she can’t imagine what treasures are held in the Archives. She’ll need to make a list so she doesn’t forget to ask about anything. “Yes! Absolutely. Of course.”

Cora smiles again at Ariadne’s excitement. “There’s a lovely market around the corner from the Cathedral, wonderful chocolate pastries. It’s four days’ ride, and we will be there for a week. Pack for summer, Val Royeaux is rather warm this time of year.”

***

Ariadne blinks in the bright afternoon sun. When they turned north at Cumberland yesterday to meet the Imperial Highway, they left the Waking Sea behind. She feels strange without the sound of constant waves crashing on the shore. Inland insects buzz all around, and birds chirp cheerily from trees she rides under, but she misses the waves and the gulls. 

“We should warn you,” Daniel says as he rides up beside Ariadne. He pushes his hair out of his eyes.

Ariadne squints at her friend. He’s been incredibly patient with her these past weeks as she’s asked him nonstop about spells she should’ve mastered years ago. She should ask Michael, her actual instructor, but Daniel’s less intimidating. He hasn’t accidentally raised anything from the dead since those nine roosters her first night - though he’s _intentionally_ raised a few more - but just knowing that he made that mistake makes him easier to talk to, despite being six years older than her.

“About what?” She squirms in the saddle, trying to get comfortable. They’re not riding very fast, but after three days riding, her thighs and lower back ache. The Tranquil working in the stables gave her a few riding lessons in the week before they left, but those lessons had mostly focused on how to mount, dismount, and not fall off. There hadn’t been anything on how to sit so her entire body doesn’t hurt when they make camp for the night. Thank the Maker they only have another day of riding before they arrive.

He looks ahead to Cora and Ser Marcus riding in the lead, and then around, checking the distance of the other templars. “The Circle is...not like the rest of the world, for most of Thedas.”

Ariadne’s brow furrows. “In what way?”

“He means for mages,” Margaret rides up on Ariadne’s other side. “Most of Thedas is terrified of us. Templars aren’t always kind. But Cora’s made sure that none of that happens at our Circle. Our templars are good and respectful, and those who aren’t, Edward finds some minor offense and forces them elsewhere.”

All the templars she’s met have been nice, or at least polite. She can’t imagine being guarded by people who didn’t care for her wellbeing. “But doesn’t that just give someone else a bad templar?”

Daniel shrugs. “I guess. Ari, you grew up in a Chantry…”

Catching on to what he’s trying to say, Ariadne’s shoulders stiffen. “A Chantry orphanage in Lower Ostwick, and thus I am uniquely aware of the ways people can treat each other terribly, especially people they think are below them.” She narrows her eyes. “Contrary to what you may believe of me, I did not grow up sheltered to the cruelty of the world.” Her words come out far harsher than she intended, and she immediately softens. “Daniel, I’m sorry,” she says, horrified she snapped at her friend.

Daniel recoils from her words, stunned at the outburst, but shakes his head and gives her a reassuring smile. “ _I’m_ sorry,” he says, releasing his reins with one hand to raise his palm up in apology. “I know Cora arranged for you to leave the Spire and visit the Archives, I just didn’t want you to be caught off guard.”

Margaret nods. “The Circle protects them from us, but also us from them,” she says, uncharacteristically somber.

Ariadne rides through the rest of the afternoon in silence, mulling over her friends’ words. Only after passing their Harrowing are mages allowed off tower grounds, and even then it’s under strict supervision of templars; she passed hers less than a month ago, there hadn’t been time or reason to leave, even to go into Ostwick for a few hours. She’s not left the Circle since she arrived four years ago, and it’s a little disconcerting that her first trip away had two of her friends give her warning. 

But, as she twists and stretches and tries to relieve the dull ache in her back, she’s determined not to let any of it - not bad templars, not wary non-mages, not Edward’s maneuverings - darken the week ahead.

***

They ride in past the Val Royeaux city gates well after sundown, the moon full and silver high in the night sky. Despite the darkness, the city remains lit up with torches and ornate street lamps. Ariadne doubts that Val Royeaux ever really sleeps, maybe dozes off for an hour or two each night.

Ariadne slows her horse to match Cora’s pace and looks around her, soaking in the sounds and smells and sights. Val Royeaux glitters, even in the night. They stop at a guardhouse just past the gates, met by templars in armor so polished it gleams.

Knight Captain Marcus speaks for them all, declaring their business and giving their names. The youngest Val Royeaux templar struggles with his parchment as he tries to transcribes the information; he eventually settles for holding the parchment against the guardhouse stone and writing at an unfortunate angle. The other Val Royeaux templars search their bags, thoroughly but not quite roughly, while the templar in charge keeps a wary eye on Cora and the staff strapped to her back.

Ariadne watches Cora throughout the search. Back ramrod straight, chin up, raven hair let loose from its usual knot, fluttering down her back in the slight wind. Silent, so unlike Cora, but Ariadne supposes that the warning applies to them all. As closely as the templar watches her, Cora turns her head and observes the templars as they search her companions’ bags. The moon illuminates her profile: a cocked eyebrow and set jaw, but nothing to reveal her feelings about this delay.

The templar searching Ariadne’s bag digs deeper and draws Ariadne’s attention away from Cora. He paws through her underclothes and finds her notebook and copy of the Chant. Her eyes narrow and her teeth clench as his fingers linger on her smallclothes. She swallows the small growl in the back of her throat before it becomes an audible noise. 

The _clip clop_ of hooves on cobblestones catches everyone’s attention. Another templar joins them, though she doesn’t dismount her horse. “Why is this taking so long? You were told they were expected.”

The templars immediately cease their searches and bow their heads in deference. Before any of them can attempt an explanation, she dismisses their excuses with a wave of her gauntleted fingers without relinquishing hold of her reins. “Their entrance has been documented?”

“Yes, Knight Captain,” the young templar offers his parchment to her.

She shakes her head at the state of the writing and folds the parchment after she skims it, and tucks it away in her armor. “Madame Marquess, I apologize for the unfortunate and _inconsiderate_ delay. Obviously my orders were not relayed to the appropriate parties,” she says with minimally-disguised irritation.

Cora’s stern face breaks into a wide grin. “Ser Evangeline, it is lovely to see you again.”

Ariadne relaxes when Cora turns, and the moonlight catches on her genuine smile. She looks down in her bag and rearranges her belongings, ensuring that her Chant is still there; until her fingertips brush the smooth leather, she isn’t convinced that it hasn’t been stolen. Relieved, she closes the clasp.

“And you as well, Lady Cora.” She turns to her templars. “I will escort them to the Spire. I believe their own templars are sufficient guard for the next ten minutes. Return to your duties,” she dismisses them. Clucking to her horse, she turns around and sets a slow walk back into the city proper. “How is my uncle these days?”

“Edward is well,” Cora says, allowing a hint of affection into her voice. “I’ll suggest that he write to you more often.”

Evangeline laughs, a tinkling bell-like sound. “The day Edward voluntarily writes a letter is the day nugs grow wings.”

As the two women catch up, easing into their friendship again, Ariadne looks around her with wide eyes. Even at night, Val Royeaux is everything Ostwick is not: buildings with smooth white walls, open streets lacking the broken cobblestones that caused her so much trouble as a child, blooming flower baskets hanging from the lantern poles that dot each corner. She nudges her horse away from an orange tree and squints at the plaque underneath it; the engraving is too faint to read in the dim light, but she wouldn’t be surprised if it warned about fines and stolen fruit.

They turn a corner and Ariadne gasps. She’s heard stories of the White Spire, a glowing tower always alight with magic, but none could prepare her for seeing it in person. Mouth open in awe, she stares at its brilliance as they ride closer.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

She blinks and turns to Cora, who’s slowed to ride beside her. Purple spots dance across her vision. “How do they do that?”

“It’s the same principle as glowstones, on a much larger scale.”

Knowing how it works doesn’t diminish the spectacle, and Ariadne looks up at the shining tower again.

Margaret scoffs, shading her eyes. “How does anyone sleep around here?”

Evangeline keeps moving forward, but slows her horse just enough to not pull too far away from her charges. “The light doesn’t glow inside. This way.” She turns them toward the right of the tower.

Ariadne cranes her neck as they pass underneath a series of white arches. As large as Blackrock Tower feels sometimes, it’s dwarfed by the sprawl of the White Spire. What looked like a simple tower from far away is surrounded by small buildings at its base, all connected to the tower by the same bleached stone. Torchlight flickers against the brick, melting into the pure white magical glow of the tower and illuminating the street below almost into daylight.

She wishes Lily were here. She’s so accustomed to Lily being close that her absence is nearly tangible, leaving her almost as off-balance as riding a horse all day does. But Lily’s asleep in Ostwick’s infirmary with the fever that swept through half the tower before Ruth found the right preventative potion for those who hadn’t yet fallen ill. She hadn’t wanted to leave, not while Lily was sick, but Lily had told her she was being silly, and that a trip to Val Royeaux would be far more interesting than sitting in an infirmary for a week when she didn’t have so much as a cough. She imagines Lily’s face lit up by the glow of the Spire at night, and smiles.

They ride into the stables where three Tranquil motion them into prepared stalls. Ariadne stumbles a little when she dismounts, and presses her hand against the wall for balance; riding comes more easily to her now than it did when they first left, but sitting for so long leaves her swaying when she tries to walk again. She unhooks her bag from the saddle and withdraws the apple she kept from lunch. “Thank you,” she whispers to her horse and gives him the apple as she brushes her hand over his grey mane.

Settling her bag over one shoulder, she joins the others, leaving her horse in the care of the Tranquil. They follow Ser Evangeline out of the stables, back underneath the arches, and in through a side door into the Spire.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Letters from vacationing girlfriends, and a bit of important magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thievinghippo and bloomincnidarians are the greatest beta and cheerleader a girl could ask for.
> 
> There was a question on tumblr about how to pronounce Ari's name: it's _Ah-ree-ahd-nuh_ , and her nickname is _Ah-ree_.

Lily kicks the blankets aside. She’ll be cold again in a few minutes - Ruth says it’s a good sign, the hot and then the cold, that the fever’s almost at an end now - but it’s intolerable only being comfortable for short whiles. At least there’s a sunny window opposite her bed in the infirmary, looking out over the courtyard. She puts her book down and closes her eyes. She’s been in this bed two weeks now, shivering and sweating and coughing and aching, and even the latest Davinia Merryweather can’t hold her attention.  


And this one, according to Mari, has all the _good_ parts.

She takes a deep breath and instantly regrets it. The air grates roughly against her sore, dry throat, and she coughs so hard she sees stars. Her lungs burn and spasm and she nearly doubles over, scrunching her eyes shut tight as she tries to stop. After what feels like an eternity, she manages to control the coughing and sits up again. She wipes at her watery eyes and buries her head in her hands; her throat’s even more raw than before, and she’s just _so tired_ of coughing. 

Octavia brings her a cup of water, and though swallowing hurts nearly worse than the coughing, Lily drinks it all. The water tastes funny, with a hint of not-quite-grape. She squints at the empty cup before handing it back to Octavia.

“Ruth’s trying a new recipe for the cough syrup,” Octavia says. “This one mixes with water, and is supposed to taste better.” She fluffs up the pillows behind Lily, resting them against the headboard.

“It’s an improvement,” Lily says, her voice hoarse. She scoots backward to lean against the pillows. “But that isn’t saying much.”

Octavia wrinkles her nose in sympathy. “Sorry. Oh,” she reaches into her robes and withdraws a letter. “This came for you this morning.”

Lily takes the letter. “Thanks,” she says. She turns the folded letter over as Octavia leaves to attend to other patients. The smooth, loopy handwriting immediately brings a smile to her face. Ariadne’s been gone for a week and a half now, and should be on her way home. Lily pushes her sweaty bangs from her face and hopes that she can have a proper bath before Ariadne gets back. She carefully slides a finger underneath the wax seal and pries it open. Drawing her knees to her chest, she opens the letter and reads.

> Dearest Lily;
> 
> I’ve no idea if you’ll receive this before I return or not (who knows with Free Marches mail these days), but in either case, I hope you’re feeling better than when I left. And I hope that if you’re not out of the infirmary yet, that Ruth’s at least moved you out of that dreadful isolated ward in the back. I do wish you could’ve come with us, but perhaps some other time. Cora must have other trips to Val Royeaux.
> 
> This city is... _gorgeous_ isn’t a strong enough word. Resplendent, maybe. Val Royeaux gleams in a way that Ostwick, in even its best quarters on its best days does not. The buildings are pure white, and their doors and window shutters are painted with bright pops of color. Gilded archways and intricate murals are everywhere, even in the tiniest corners and alleys. The gardens are impeccably-maintained, not even a single leaf out of place. 
> 
> Even the butterflies are perfect. One landed on me yesterday, while I was eating lunch in the Grand Cathedral’s garden. Its wings were such a bright blue, shimmering purple in the right angle. I dared not move lest it startle and fly away - it sat on my knee for what felt like an hour (but was really probably only half a minute).
> 
> There are little plaques beside certain trees and plants in the gardens. Donations, usually, someone with enough money to get their name engraved on a piece of metal that someone else is responsible for brushing the dirt off and shining. A large number of them seem devoted to warning people that it’s a crime to pick the fruit (explaining this to my horse was a rather difficult matter on the night we arrived). But some of them have beautiful stories; only a few words in love or memory, you can tell they mean something far more than the money it cost to plant the tree.
> 
> (I know the entire city isn’t this way; Ser Liselle told me of the rougher, dirtier area she grew up in, and even if she hadn’t - if Ostwick has a lower district, then Val Royeaux certainly does. Part of me wants to seek out those areas, those muddier streets, and do so with all the bread and coin I can find stuffed in my pockets for the children. But the templars here are strict, and so in the pretty quarters I remain.)
> 
> And, oh, the White Spire. The stories and paintings do not do it justice. It shines day and night, brilliantly bright even in the noon sun.
> 
> (We made a pact not to tell, but Sophia and I got so lost coming back from the Grand Cathedral the first day we visited. The sun was beginning to set, and the Spire’s glow against the dimming sky helped us turn ourselves around properly.)

Lily grins. Sophia arrived at the Tower a week after she did, a shy new recruit who was possibly even more nervous about her future than Lily was. Sophia’s barely a full templar now, and must have been horrified at the thought of losing both herself and her charge somewhere in the capital city of Orlais. They’re lucky the Spire glows so well - Ariadne’s no help with directions, even with a map. She knows Ariadne thinks she isn’t looking, but she still sometimes catches her looking at the map of the tower she drew for her that first day.

> The Grand Cathedral was...oh, Lily, I know you’ve not the same fondness for the Chantry I do, but it was overwhelming. I couldn’t speak for a few moments when I stepped through its doors, and I nearly wept. The Sisters were singing from Apotheosis - _“The Maker is with us! His Light shall be our banner, and we shall bear it through the gates of that city and deliver it to our brothers and sisters awaiting their freedom within those walls. At last, the Light shall shine upon all of creation, if we are only strong enough to carry it.”_ \- such beautiful soprano and contralto, voices like angels coming down from the stalls above.
> 
> Huge windows of stained glass, nearly glowing in the morning sun. There’s one on the side, high above the choir stalls, of Andraste’s sermon at Valarian. She looks so strong, so powerful, I can’t imagine how the artist managed to capture her so perfectly in glass. I could’ve stared at that window for hours, whispering her words to myself, had Grand Cleric Alexia not come to collect me.
> 
> She’s rigid, sharp, an old childhood friend of Cora’s (and it’s easy to see how well they must’ve gotten on). I asked I’m sure a thousand questions, and she patiently answered them all, even when I came back the next day, and two days later, each time with more questions. On the ride here I’d made a list of things to ask, but the list hardly covered a quarter of what I wanted to know.
> 
> (Yes, I made a list of questions to ask the Grand Cleric. You’re not surprised though, are you? Or that I took notes on her answers?)

Smiling, Lily shakes her head. She isn’t surprised in the least. She’d be surprised if Ariadne _hadn’t_  made a list or taken notes. 

> The Archives, oh, but I could _live_ there. So many texts and translations, even copies of the Dissonant verses written in Tevene! (Brother Tobias wasn’t supposed to show me that, I’m sure, but he’s also probably not supposed to keep a stash of sweets in his desk drawer and allow his initiates free reign of the stacks). It’s a wonderful place that smells a bit musty and could do with a good cataloguing system, but I could get lost in there. I nearly did, the stacks are so tall and so long, but I didn’t mind. It’d be a good place to get lost, to sit for days and make it through barely half the books on one shelf.
> 
> Lest you think it’s all been boring musty books and canticles, one of the mages here can produce the most darling tiny cats out of her flames and she’s been teaching me. So far I’ve only managed a flaming blob with three lopsided legs, and earned myself a stern scolding from Spire templars (they seem so panicked, always, and there’s a jumpiness to them that ours don’t have. I suppose their concern is understandable - this is Val Royeaux, it’s easy for a mage to disappear outside the Spire’s doors simply by turning a corner; I know the Spire’s different from the Tower, but I’m baffled that anyone would want to leave - isn’t the Circle home?). But she claims I am teachable, and hopefully before I leave I’ll have managed a proper four legs, possibly a tail.

The Circle is home _now_ , but it wasn’t always. Though three and a half years have passed, Lily still misses the smell of the orchard during harvest season, a crisp, fruity scent that heralded autumn even though the temperatures still felt like summer. If she hadn’t been taken away, she’d be climbing in the trees right now, picking the apples her father and the farmhands were too big to safely climb and reach.

She doubts she’d be welcome at home if she ran away now, not after the lightning strike in the middle of the orchard as the templars dragged her away while Papa refused to even look at her. She swallows against the memory, winces at the rough, raw pain in the back of her throat, and drags her fingertip over Ariadne’s words - _isn’t the Circle home?_

It is. Now. 

Lily shakes off the melancholy - too much time in bed staring at the ceiling, she’s going a bit stir-crazy - and continues reading.

> Two days after we arrived, Knight Enchanters were practicing in the courtyard in the morning sun. Knight Enchanters! Mages who serve the Chantry! 
> 
> I know fighting with a quarterstaff is an entirely different breed than fighting with a sword (and a magical sword, at that!), but could you imagine? It’s a long way off yet - I asked Cora, and they don’t even consider anyone until they’re eighteen - but by then I’ll have five years of fighting lessons. And Cora said she’d let me take sword now that I’m competent with a staff.
> 
> (okay, she didn’t precisely say that, but there was a look in her eye. You know the one, where she has a secret that will make you happy when she finally tells.)
> 
> I’m given to understand that it’s rare to see more than one Knight Enchanter in the same place (except in wartime, of course) and to see that many - ten! including Cora, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her wield a sword before, it was like an extension of her arm - practicing in unison was a sight. Breathtaking! 
> 
> Afterward, Cora introduced us to them all, and we had lunch with an old friend of hers, Enchanter Vivienne, visiting from Montsimmard. _Statuesque_ , I believe is the proper word to use to describe her. She pretends that she’s better than us quite a bit and has airs about her, but beneath those airs she was nicer - genuinely kind - than some of the other older mages we’ve met here, and I did see her smile once or twice.
> 
> It’s two years away and even more years of training once they accept me (if; I shouldn’t be so confident. But, Maker - to be able to serve the Chantry, even as a mage), but I’ve decided. I’d given up hope years ago of being part of the Chantry, but now...it’s premature, I know, but doesn’t Knight Enchanter Ariadne have a nice ring to it?

Knight Enchanter Ariadne has a _wonderful_ ring to it. And though Lily doesn’t know what her own future will look like, though she’s watched her friends gravitate toward schools and disciplines for years while she flounders with tiny injury-healing spells and even tinier storms, the excitement in Ariadne’s written words is contagious. Lily smiles and bites her lip. Cora and another Knight Enchanter sparred in demonstration at the Wintersend festival before Ariadne arrived, and Lily well remembers the two women fighting: shimmering spirit blades clashing silently as they battled across the frozen field. Their movements looked effortless, though their strength and years of training was clear later, when she and Mari picked up sticks and pretended to fight but couldn’t manage even half an ounce of the elegance the two enchanters displayed.

Tall and toned, with singular, sharp focus, Ariadne’s an intimidating opponent in their combat lessons, whether with a quarterstaff or just her hands and feet (and Lily’s eternally thankful that, because of their height difference, they’re never paired up). A spirit blade would be natural in Ariadne’s grip.

Lily takes a breath before she continues reading, but her breath hitches in her throat and she coughs. It aches, deep in her chest, and she almost can’t catch her breath again. She has to put the letter down as she coughs, and tears spring to her eyes with the pain. She closes her eyes and focuses very hard on taking even, shallow breaths as best she can between bouts of coughing, until she’s sure it’s calmed. Flopping back against the pillows, she waves off Octavia before she can come any closer with another awful-tasting syrup, and relaxes her shoulders. Lily shakes her head in irritation - on top of the normal aching from being sick, her entire upper body is stiff and tense from all the coughing.

She takes a careful sip of water, and waits another minute to be sure that she’s really done coughing for now, and picks up the letter again.

> The food at the Spire is a bit forgettable, which was a disappointment to discover, but the markets surrounding the area far more than make up for it. Fresh, juicy fruit (probably picked directly from the trees when the city guard isn’t looking); such sweet oranges, even better than the ones Cora gets. Oh, and the most wonderful cheese. There’s an entire market for it! The market alley smells terrible, on account of some stinky fermented spreadable thing from Verchiel (I tried a sample, and it was everything I could do not to spit it out in front of the seller; he was so proud of his wares, but it was so _awful_ ), but it’s worth bearing through the stench for the market has every kind of cheese you could imagine. Soft, hard, sharp, sweet, all of it. 
> 
> And the bakeries! You know that corner bakery in the upper Ostwick market, the one by the flower seller? Imagine how that smells on an early Saturday morning, only times twenty.
> 
> Brother Tobias insisted on a market trip for lunch one day (he said I spent too much time with books - rich words from an archivist! I told him so, and he laughed - and should get out in the sun). He looked quite mad, flipping from cart to cart with his basket, examining every piece of fruit and being particular about his cheeses. But it was exquisite.
> 
> I’m sorry, it’s probably awful to hear me go on about food when you’ve been stuck in the infirmary feeling terrible. I’m hoping to be able to smuggle you back a chocolate pastry, but I have my doubts about its ability to survive the journey home, and not just because Daniel’s had at least two every day.
> 
> I’d be remiss if I didn’t confess to you that I nearly fell off a ladder. But I’ll let your imagination run with that for a bit, and tell you the truth in person.
> 
> We leave in two days, back in plenty of time for Satinalia. Cora has plans to bring back an enormous amount of food (I think she wants to top last year’s Satinalia feast!), and Daniel has promised to limit the number of dead things he returns with. I hope you continue to feel better and are on your feet when I return.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Ariadne
> 
> PS - even if the pastry doesn’t make it, you can expect presents

Lily smiles, and reads the letter twice more. She hadn’t expected to hear from Ariadne during her trip, and the letter was a much-needed bit of delight and distraction from her illness. Even though the words are written, she can hear Ariadne’s voice in her head as clear as if she were sitting next to her and reading it aloud.

She checks the date at the top - they’re three days into their journey now, almost back. Though she’s been sick most of the time and not had much energy to miss Ariadne, Lily’s felt her absence; felt the silence without her laugh, felt the cool evening breeze from the ocean without her to warm the room, felt the loneliness without her embrace. 

She reads the letter a fourth time, and then carefully folds the parchment and sets it on the small table beside her bed. Maybe now, with the knowledge that Ariadne’s close to home, Davinia Merryweather can hold her attention.

***

Lily wakes in the night to someone crying in the bed beside hers. She pretends to be asleep, hoping Octavia or Ruth or someone will come take care of the crying boy, but five minutes pass without anyone sleepily shuffling toward him with soothing words.

“Hey,” she whispers. She reaches over to grab her glasses and then squints through the lenses, trying to make out the boy’s face in the dark. “Jacob,” she whispers a little louder when he doesn’t respond. He wasn’t there when she fell asleep, he must’ve been moved out of the quarantine room. Lily hopes that means he’s gotten better, and not that they needed the bed back there for someone else.

He sniffles and rubs his nose on his sleeve. 

“Are you okay?” At the shake of his head, she offers him a smile. “Bad dream?” Her own fever dreams finally abated a few days ago, but for some they seem to be lingering.

Jacob nods. He draws the blanket up around his shoulders.

He’s one of the youngest apprentices, arrived a month ago and barely eight years old. They all have stories of their magic manifesting - some innocent like Ariadne’s sparks, some more violent like her own lightning - and Lily wonders what happened to make this small boy create icicles in the middle of summer. Feeling strong enough to try a little bit of magic, she reaches her left hand across the space between them. “Give me your hand,” she says softly.

Jacob hesitantly sneaks his hand out from underneath the blanket and clasps Lily’s.

His hand is cold and clammy, and she starts with a simple warming spell. Lily watches his shoulders loosen as the calming warmth slowly creeps up his arm to the rest of his body. She closes her eyes and reaches out to the Fade, closer than usual now, as she’s not far from sleep. 

The Fade around her takes the form of a summer meadow, with tall grass brushing her knees and cicadas buzzing in the distances. It smells of fresh flowers and grass, with a hint of apple. The golden strands she needs float all around her through the warm, thick air like dandelion fluff on the wind. She carefully reaches out and touches one with her fingertip. The thin strand, not much longer than her forearm, pulses with light and floats closer toward her. Pleasantly warm and soft, the weightless string of magic drapes itself over her palm, as if it was waiting for her. More strands follow the first, of their own accord, falling lazily into her open palm until she has enough.

“Thank you,” she whispers to the remaining strands in the air, and closes her hand around the raw magic. 

She’s not tried this spell before, only read of it in a crumbling and dusty book while she was supposed to be learning the proper spell to combat springtime allergies. The book so clearly described the brilliant filaments of magic necessary for this type of healing that the first time she saw them in her dreams afterward, she wondered how she hadn’t seen them before. 

Carefully, she braids the strands, strengthening the fragile threads as she weaves them together. With a slow breath, she mentally steps out of the sunny meadow and back into the dark infirmary, with the braid in her hands. Still with her eyes closed, she exhales, slow and soft, and sends the bright magical strands over to Jacob. This would be easier if she could touch his forehead, but her joints still ache too much to move out of bed. She twitches the fingers on her right hand, and the braid circles around Jacob’s head and gently sinks into him. The strands glitter and pulse once more, before disappearing completely.

She opens her eyes. Jacob hasn’t seen anything other than her closing her eyes and concentrating; she’s not found anyone yet who can see the golden threads as easily as she can. But he looks calmer, less scared. His eyes aren’t quite as wide as they were, and he’s not darting his gaze rapidly around the room, searching for shadows that aren’t there.

Lily smiles at him and releases his hand. “Feel better?”

He nods, and even manages to crack a small smile. “Thanks,” he says.

“You’re welcome. Go back to sleep.” On another night, she might be able to help him with that, too. But even the small amount of magic she used soothing his mind from his nightmare expended almost all of her strength. Nudging him over to sleep is beyond her abilities for now. 

She sets her glasses back on the nightstand and rolls over, staring up at the ceiling. She smiles quietly to herself, her fingers still warm and tingling from the magic. 

The spell worked - _her_ spell worked. And it helped him. 

***

Lily’s room is small, all the rooms built for mages are, with only enough space for a narrow bed, chair and desk, and a low dresser underneath the window. It is small, but it is _hers_ , and hers alone. And after nearly two and a half weeks in the infirmary, in constant close quarters with others, listening to everyone coughing and sniffling and occasionally throwing up (and only sometimes into a bucket), her own room is bliss even if she is still weak enough that she’s mostly confined to her bed.

It’s her bed, with her blankets and her pillows, next to her window overlooking the sea.

“Come in,” she says in response to the knock on her door. She pushes herself up, sitting a little straighter in the bed. It’s about time for lunch.

But it isn’t one of the Tranquil who brings her the tray with soup and a glass of juice and a strength potion.

“Ari!” she exclaims excitedly, despite her faint, hoarse voice. She knew they were due back today, but had assumed they wouldn’t return until after dinner. 

Ariadne bumps the door shut behind her. “Hi,” she smiles.

Ariadne’s smile, wide and happy, brings a lightness to Lily that she hasn’t felt since she took ill. “Welcome back,” she says, returning the smile as Ariadne sets the tray down on her bedside table.

Tucking her hair behind her ear, Ariadne perches on the edge of the bed and hands Lily her soup. “How are you feeling?”

“A lot better than when you left.” She warms her hands around the bowl.

“You look a lot better,” Ariadne says quietly. She kisses her fingertips and rests them on Lily’s cheek, evidently having been advised against any actual kissing for the meantime. She holds Lily’s gaze for a moment, soft and tender while her warm fingertips gently linger on Lily’s cheek. Lily closes her eyes and leans into Ariadne’s touch, just slightly.

Ariadne looks down at the bowl of soup in Lily’s hands. “The chocolate pastry, sadly, did not make it back entirely whole. It’s a bit crushed. A lot crushed, actually.” She drops her fingers away.

Lily shrugs and swallows a spoonful of the mild broth. The hot liquid feels divine against her throat. “That’s alright. I’m not feeling much up for more than soup anyway.” She’s become rather bored of soup, and doubts she’ll voluntarily eat it any time in the future, but the thought of anything more substantial still turns her stomach.

“But.” Ariadne’s eyebrows raise in mischief and she bites her lip. “I do have a surprise for you.”

Lily sets her bowl aside while Ariadne reaches into a deep pocket of her robes and withdraws a book. She hands it to Lily with a grin.

Lily turns the book over - _Masks and Masquerades_ , the latest from Davinia Merryweather, and what she’s been leaning on for entertainment over the past few days.

“Look inside,” Ariadne urges.

Ariadne’s enthusiasm is palpable, and Lily flips the cover open. She squints to read the blocky, unfamiliar handwriting.

> _To Lily - I hope this brings you as much joy in the reading as it did for me in the writing. - Davinia_

She gasps and closes the cover. And then opens it again, and reads the inscription again. “She never does book signings, how did you…?”

“It turns out that Brother Tobias in the Chantry Archives is Tobias Merryweather. Davinia is his sister-in-law. I mentioned that I had a... _friend_ back at the Circle who enjoys her books, and he brought this in the last day I was there.”

Lily traces her fingers over the writing and then looks up at Ariadne. She’s missed Ariadne greatly and felt a longing ache in her chest that wasn’t from the cough. Everything feels right again, now that she’s back. “Thank you, Ari.”

Ariadne smiles back at her and squeezes her hand. “You’re welcome. Now, eat your soup. I need to tell you about how Margaret nearly got into a fight with a chevalier over a block of cheese.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes, Joanie does an experiment, and an important conversation is had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel a little bit like a broken record but, seriously, Hippo and Blooming are the greatest.

Ariadne spends the next year and a half trying to catch up with her peers. She practically lives in the library, fingers perpetually stained with ink as she writes page after page of notes and countless essays on both the esoteric and the practical. Her magic grows stronger under Michael’s tutelage, and shortly after her seventeenth birthday she’s capable of a raging inferno with just a twitch of her fingers. 

At first, the fire continued to frighten her. It reminded her of a small house engulfed in flame and a forgotten stuffed nug with one button eye. But with Michael’s patience and her own determination not to let the fear demon conquer any more of her life than it already head, the heat of the flames and tingle of magic along her skin slowly became familiar. They’re comforting now.

Her room on the fourth floor overlooking the stables is small, but it’s hers. The quiet took some getting used to, no beds creaking when someone else turns over in the middle of the night, and no snoring - for the first time she can remember, her room is hers and hers alone. She quickly fills it with books from the library so she can continue studying even after lights out, and she exchanges her handwriting skills for a woven green rug from a seller in Ostwick’s Saturday market. The family history she painstakingly spends two weekends copying for him is immensely boring, but the rug is a brilliant emerald green, and plush beneath her bare feet.

And every bit of time she can, she spends with Lily.

***

The first day of Drakonis has everyone outside. Spring may have officially begun a month ago, but winter clung on with all its might, leaving them a parting gift of a snowstorm mid-Guardian. Drakonis arrives with sun and blue sky, and though most are still wearing scarves or sweaters with their robes and armor, it’s warm enough that everyone abandons the tower for fresh air.

Ariadne and Lily find a space underneath the oak tree beside the rocky shore; Lily sits, and Ariadne lies on her stomach. Mages are spread out across the courtyard - Joanie and Mari and Margaret a few feet away on the rocks, Sarah and Daniel underneath their own tree, Samuel by himself bent over a book, Quentin charming a group of older girls with a pair of tiny glass kittens chasing each other through the grass, some stud or practice while others just lie in the sun - and templars stand guard around them all. Everyone’s been cooped up inside for too long, the relief at feeling the spring wind and salt air again is palpable.

The pair work in silence, listening to the the rhythmic ocean waves and low chatter of their peers as their pens scratch notes across parchment. Ariadne’s halfway through drawing her immolate spell glyph when Lily breaks the silence.

“Have you ever heard of a healing specialty that focuses on people’s minds?” 

Ariadne pauses in her drawing and looks up at her girlfriend. Lily’s voice was hesitant, nervous, and so unlike Lily that Ariadne tilts her head in concern. “No,” she says after thinking for a moment, “but I’ve not done much research into healing. It might. Why?”

Lily sighs and leans her back against the tree. “I think that’s what I want to do. But I haven’t found _anything_ about it. I’ve been over every title in that section of the library three times, and there’s _nothing_.” She looks down at her hands.

Ariadne rolls over and sits up, scooching backward to sit next to her. Lily told her what she did in the infirmary, with Jacob and his nightmares, and how excited and proud she was that it worked. If there’s anyone suited for that type of healing - it’s Lily. “I’m sure it exists,” she says, bumping her shoulder against Lily’s. She’s lucky that she knows what she wants to do and that there’s a clear path toward becoming a Knight Enchanter; it’s hard and long, but clear. 

“Yeah,” Lily sighs. Her shoulders drop and she picks at the grass beneath her.

Ariadne looks at her, and then stretches her arm around Lily’s shoulders. She presses a kiss to Lily’s temple; Lily’s clearly been thinking about this for a while. “You could talk to Cora,” she says, squeezing Lily in a sideways hug. 

Nodding, Lily rests her head on Ariadne’s shoulder. 

A flock of seagulls fly overhead, squawking, and Ariadne brushes her thumb against Lily’s upper arm. She thought Lily was leaning toward spirit healing, like Joanie has from the beginning, but this - this suits her even better. Lily’s a good healer, though it’s been clear for a while that she prefers talking to her patients than sewing them back up.

“Did you know Margaret’s trying her hand at shapeshifting?” Ariadne says, intending to distract Lily from her worries.

Lily lifts her head and stares at Ariadne. “What did she do?”

“Don’t ask her to shift in front of you, she’s not very good at it yet.” 

Lily’s nose wrinkles. “I’ve seen Octavia shift, and she knows what she’s doing. I don’t think I want to know, do I?”

“She can only manage her eyes, and the first form she’s learning is spider.”

The face Lily makes is priceless, a combination of shock and horror and utter amusement, and totally worth having to actually _see_ Margaret’s spider eyes last week. Ariadne watches as Lily tries to imagine what that looks like, and smiles to herself - mission accomplished.

***

The lightning hits her out of nowhere.

Ariadne stumbles to her knees, every nerve vibrating. She closes her eyes, pushes away the discomfort and shock, and focuses inward. The Fade tingles nearby and she mentally reaches out and grabs the loose strings of magic to her, gathering them in her palms. She separates three strands and casts them around her, strengthening her barrier while she pulls her spell together.

Margaret slams a bolt of chain lightning into the ground, and Ariadne feels her barrier waver.

After they turn eighteen, combat training evolves to include magic. Heavily supervised, of course, and nothing damaging, but, as Cora’s said more than once, _magic on its own may not be enough, and neither is simply fighting - you are lucky, and can do both._

Enough for _what_ , Ariadne doesn’t know. But Cora hasn’t led her astray yet.

The courtyard smells of ozone and flame, of burned grass and charred dirt, with a promise of rain on the salt air. Margaret’s energy barrage hits even harder, weakening Ariadne’s barrier almost too far, and Ariadne growls. As she stands, the wind whips through Ariadne’s unkempt braid, and she clutches her palms into fists at her side. 

This would be easier with a staff, but she might not always have one. 

Tiny flames lick at her bare feet, dry grass caught aflame from the lightning. She barely feels the burn, and the flames hiss and extinguish when she recharges her barrier with a wave of her hand. Thunder booms from across the ocean, and Ariadne throws her palms open. Twin fireballs encase her hands. She throws them at Margaret in rapid succession, one after the other.

Margaret stands still and grimaces against the impact. Her barrier flickers, but doesn’t fall.

“Enough,” Arif calls. “I think you two have done enough damage to the courtyard for today.”

Ariadne shakes off her barrier and smothers the remaining flames with a snap of her fingers. She meets Margaret in the middle of the field. “Good fight,” she says, setting her hands on Margaret’s shoulders and leaning her forehead against hers.

Margaret returns the gesture with a smile. “Good fight,” she agrees. 

“Ariadne,” Senior Enchanter Arif says when the two separate. “I realize it is early yet for you to consider specializing in any one branch or subclass of magic, but should you desire - you would have my recommendation for arcane warrior training.”

Ariadne smiles at the elf. Her cheeks flush with pride; to think - only two years ago she’d never intentionally cast a spell in her life. “Thank you, I’ll consider it.”

Margaret bounces on the balls of her feet. “It’s fun,” she says.

“I’ll consider it,” Ariadne tells her friend with a grin, though she thinks Margaret might be a bit biased - she’s nearly three years into arcane warrior training. But Ariadne’s sights are firmly set on something a little more elusive. It’ll be years now before she’s even eligible for the Knight Enchanters, but her plans to ask Cora about it have not wavered. To be able to serve the Chantry, even as a mage...the thought has gone a long way to soothe the disappointment she felt four years ago, upon arriving at the Circle and realizing she would never become a cleric.

Arif looks at the horizon and the oncoming storm. “Go inside, have a healer look over you. I’ll clean this up.”

Both girls stand at attention, feet together and backs straight, and bow their heads before heading inside.

“You’re going to try for Knight Enchanter, aren’t you?” Margaret says once they’re inside. She grins, triumphant and smug, like she’d finally figured out a secret.

Ariadne exhales and turns down the hallway that will lead them to the infirmary. “Yes. Don’t,” she stops so suddenly Margaret nearly runs into her. She turns around. “Don’t tell anyone.” It isn’t a secret, but she’s reaching for something so elusive hardly anyone has seen more than two in the same place at the same time. Though she’s caught up to her peers now, she’s not nearly as accomplished as she could be if she hadn’t spent three years doing nothing. Becoming a Knight Enchanter won’t be easy, and it isn’t a guarantee they’ll even accept her; Ariadne would rather not have the entire tower following her progress. “It’s years away, someone needs to recommend me, there’s a test and then there’s loads of training, and -” She silences with Margaret’s finger on her lips.

“Secret’s safe, Ari,” Margaret promises. She waits for Ariadne to nod, and then drops her hand. They continue their path down the hall and step into the infirmary.

“Don’t move!” Joanie shouts from the table in the center of the room. They hold up a hand, palm open, waving at their friends to stop.

Margaret and Ariadne abruptly stop in the doorway. “What are you doing?” Margaret asks calmly.

Ariadne stares at the chalked circle on the stone floor surrounding the table and lifts an eyebrow. After five years, she’s no longer surprised by the constant experimentation encouraged at Ostwick. From the undead roosters her first morning, to ice mines in the rookery at least twice a year, to the north wing of the basement library being almost constantly on fire but never actually burning, hardly anything fazes her anymore.

“I need to say again that this is against my recommendations as your advising enchanter,” Octavia says from her own position outside the chalk circle. Despite her words, she doesn’t sound very adamant about protesting. Only a little bored. She turns to the newcomers. “Joanie’s convinced they can improve the pain draught recipe and make it more effective.”

“It is sound magical theory,” Joanie says. They light a candle and touch the flame to a pile of carefully-cut herbs.

“What’s the circle for?” Ariadne asks.

Octavia crosses her arms and leans against the wall. “We’re having a bit of a disagreement about the explosive properties of royal elfroot and prophet’s laurel when combined with heat and dawnstone. And that,” she gestures to the circle, “is what I calculated to be the maximum radius of any potential explosion given the quantities Joanie’s working with. The worst they can do is burn their eyebrows off again.”

Margaret takes a step back. “I might’ve done this outside.”

“That’s what I suggested,” Lily says, entering from the other room, drying her hands. She tosses the towel into a basket by the door, and picks up a wooden board with a piece of parchment clipped to it. 

“I did the math,” Octavia says. “We’re safe in here.” 

Lily rolls her eyes, but smiles as she addresses Octavia. “Daniel’s head is fine. He’ll have a slight scar, but he’ll heal.” She begins to write down her notes.

“Good work,” Octavia says. “Joanie, are you going to do this or are we going to stand here all day?”

“Almost there,” Joanie says. Eyes narrowed in concentration, they tilt an empty bottle over the rising smoke from the burning herbs. When the bottle’s full of smoke, they turn it upright and quickly pour in a deep purple steaming liquid from the kettle beside them. They shove the stopper in and begin to shake the bottle.

The four standing outside the circle wince and close their eyes, but no explosion comes.

“Well,” Joanie says, “the good news is that it didn’t explode. The bad news -” Joanie uncorks the bottle and turns it upside down. Dark smoke pours from it, and the thick substance inside oozes out. It sizzles when it plops on the stone floor. “The bad news is that I made sludge that might be toxic.” They quickly stick the cork back in.

Ariadne wrinkles her nose. The sludge smells like the fresh, green scent of elfroot, underscored by something very similar to the seagull they found rotting in the sun on the rocks last week. She breathes through her mouth.

Octavia sighs. “Dispose of that and clean this up. We’ll take a look at your recipe tomorrow. You two, hop up.” She gestures for Margaret and Ariadne to sit on the beds beside the windows. “Lily, please check Ariadne.”

“How was sparring?” Lily asks as she begins to ghost her hands over Ariadne’s body, checking for injury.

“Good.” Ariadne cracks her neck. “I think I got Margaret a few times.” Damp wind blows in through the open window; the storm’s almost here.

Lily smiles proudly and drops her hands to her Ariadne’s, squeezing lightly. “You are injury-free. Your barriers are doing better.”

Ariadne feels a flush rise to her cheeks. She surreptitiously looks around the room and, finding them temporarily unobserved, sneaks a kiss to Lily’s temple. She hops down from the bed. “See you at dinner?” She still has a chapter left of _Pattern and Memory: Spell Glyphs and the Effective Mage_ to study and transcribe before it has to be on a horse bound for Montsimmard tomorrow morning. 

Nodding, Lily smiles. “See you at dinner.”

***

Cora looks up at the soft knock at her open door. The sun set a little over an hour ago, everyone should be heading for evening study. “Come in,” she calls.

Lily steps halfway into her office. “May I speak with you for a minute?”

Cora puts her parchment down and nods, gesturing for Lily to come in the rest of the way. “Of course. What’s on your mind, Lily?”

Lily shuts the door behind her, sits in the chair opposite Cora, and fidgets. She plays with the sleeves of her robes, and then traces her finger over the engraving in the chair’s wooden arms, and then back to her robes.

“Lily?” Cora prompts. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says quickly. “I just.” She sighs, looks up at Cora, and starts again. “I like healing people. It’s what I want to do but...I want to do _more_ than just heal their bodies. I’m not that good at it, actually, not compared to Joanie, and I want to make people _feel_ better. In their minds.”

Leaning back in her chair, Cora presses her lips together in thought. “There is a branch of spirit healing that focuses on the mind. It’s not very well studied, and finding any scholarly work on the subject is next to impossible. But there is a senior enchanter at Wycome who is quite adept at it. She is elderly, and hasn’t taken on an apprentice since I was there. If you’re interested, I could contact First Enchanter Gregoria, and ask if Edith would take an apprentice.”

Lily’s eyes widen. “Yes. Please. Thank you.” Her voice is quiet, surprised and relieved, like she hadn’t even known what she hoped was a possibility.

Cora holds up her hand. “Lily,” she says softly, “this would mean leaving Ostwick. Possibly permanently. Edith is not of an age where travel is advisable, and from what I understand it is years of study to master, more so than most healing specialties. Even when your training is over, I doubt I could convince the College to transfer you back.” She waits until Lily looks up at her, and holds her gaze before she continues. The hope she’d seen in Lily’s eyes just a moment ago fades into fear and sadness.

“You and Ariadne…” she trails off and shakes her head. From what she’s observed, Lily and Ariadne are a wonderful pair, and she’d like nothing more than to allow them a lifetime together. But she can’t, not with what Lily’s asking. “Gregoria and Irem are not as lenient in these matters as Edward and I are. You might be able to write to each other as _friends_ , but you would be unable to see each other again unless under the most extraordinary of circumstances. You could not continue as you are,” she finishes gently.

Lily’s breath shakes as she exhales. “I understand,” she whispers. “Could you, could you at least ask? It wouldn’t commit me to anything, would it?”

“Of course. It will be an inquiry, nothing more,” she pauses before continuing. She and Edward were separated for years before reuniting, without any contact at all. Those years of silence were terrible, knowing he was out there and cared for her as she cared for him, though entirely out of reach. Only luck brought them together again. Lily and Ariadne are still young, but young love hurts just as deeply. 

“I would never talk you out of this,” Cora says softly. “You know I encourage mages under my care to follow whatever learnings they desire. But you and Ariadne would likely never be together again, and I need you to know and understand that, as much as anything else in this decision, before you would choose to go.”

Lily looks at her with shimmering eyes. She blinks, and tears fall onto her cheeks. With another shaky breath, she looks down at her hands. Her lips part as she tries to control her tears.

Cora looks away, turning her gaze toward the window and the blue sky outside, giving Lily half a moment of privacy while she cries. She’d like to tell her that the distance won’t hurt as much as it seems, but she would be lying. 

Lily wipes at her cheeks. “I understand,” she repeats quietly, almost to herself. She takes a deep breath and looks up. “Thank you for telling me.” She glances away for a moment and when she looks back at Cora, she’s completely composed again. “How long have you known?”

“About you and Ari?” Cora smiles. “Quite possibly longer than either of you have.” At Lily’s blush, Cora’s smile widens; the two had tried to keep their relationship a secret, she knows, but the love in their eyes can’t be disguised as easily as a kiss on the cheek during a hug, or hand held below the table. “It can be a lonely life in the Circle, even with friends. Though,” her smile fades, “it is technically prohibited. So should you choose to study under Senior Enchanter Edith and leave, you not only could not see or write to Ari again as you are, you could not speak _about_ her in that manner to your peers either.”

“Why -” Lily stops herself. “Nevermind.”

“Ask your question, Lily.”

“Why do you allow us to do so much that the Chantry and Circle prohibit? I know the rules, and you could be made Tranquil, or worse, for all of this. Why risk it?”

The smile returns, but softer this time, sadder. She remembers being Lily’s age, with fear forcing her to follow rules she hated. That same fear still takes up residence in her heart and mind at times, but she would rather face being Tranquil than give into that fear again. “Because it can be a lonely life in the Circle, even with friends,” she repeats herself. She hesitates before adding the rest, but if any mage in her tower should know, it should be Lily. If Lily chooses to leave, it might very well be her fellow mages she heals more often than others, and from hurts that come from inside their own towers. “And though I cannot protect every mage in Thedas, I can - and _will_ \- protect mine.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Endings. And beginnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, this would be but a shadow of what it is if it weren't for the masterful beta work from thievinghippo, and unending cheerleading from bloomingcnidarians.

Stretching her arms over her head, Ariadne leans first to her right, and then to her left. She’s been sitting on this bench in the Great Hall for hours, studying. Her fire mine has vastly improved in the year since she learned it, but she’s having trouble forming an array. So far, the answer doesn’t lie in any of the books in front of her. She frowns.  


“May I sit?”

She looks up at Michael and nods.

He sits opposite her, and stretches his right leg out into the aisle. He peers at her open books, reading upside down. “Still having difficulty with the array?”

Ariadne exhales in frustration, blowing loose strands of hair out of her face. Right after she passed her Harrowing and needed one-on-one lessons with Michael to catch up to where she should be, she found him intimidating. She’d felt small and useless next to a senior enchanter capable of a roaring inferno with a snap of his fingers, and had asked Daniel all her questions instead so she didn’t feel quite so foolish. A year into her lessons, Daniel left for Nevarra for his apprenticeship with the Mortalitasi, and she was left with no choice but to ask Michael what she felt was a simple question about flashfire. His answer was technical, but clear, and she immediately regretted the year of questions she hadn’t asked him. Michael’s tutelage quickly advanced her through her studies and she’s long caught up, but still goes to him for help when she needs it. “Do you have any advice?”

Michael shakes his head. “Practice and try harder, unfortunately. That’s a tough one.” He reaches down and adjusts the straps on his knee brace.

She scrunches up her face. If it was a matter of pushing three times as much magic into the spell, she’d have managed an array of three mines by now. Instead, every time she tries that, she gets one mine with three times the explosive power. At least she’s not singed her eyebrows off. Yet.

“I’d like you to think about something,” Michael says, before Ariadne can figure out how to politely ask him why he sat down.

“Okay.”

“With Isabelle out of commission for the foreseeable future after her experiment last week, we’re in need of another inferno enchanter to teach apprentices.”

Ariadne quirks her eyebrow upward. “And you want the girl who was so terrified of her magic that she didn’t touch it until she got a fear demon for her Harrowing?”

He shakes his head. “No, I want the woman who learned four years of magic in two, and is powerful enough to raise a wall of fire almost as tall as she is.”

Ariadne silently blinks at him, temporarily stunned. She still thinks of herself as that scared girl in the Fade, with the burning house and the snow and the hungry shadows. It’s strange to be confronted with the fact that others don’t.

“The next exams are at the end of Guardian, not next year but the year after, so there’s plenty of time to study.” Michael smiles kindly and stands. “Think about it.” He leaves her to her books again.

Not thirty seconds later, Joanie slides into the space Michael had occupied. “What’d my brother want?” They drop their books and papers onto the table in front of them, and spread out to work, mindful of Ariadne’s material.

“He asked me to sit the enchanter exams,” she says, still stunned.

“ _Please_ ,” Joanie begs. “Join me in enchanter studying hell.” They gesture at the wide variety of books in the stack. “I need a friend here.” They make a face of melodramatic desperation.

Ariadne grins. Maybe she will. She likes magic, and she likes helping the apprentices during combat practice when she’s asked, and it would give her something to do that wasn’t fret about whether she’s Knight Enchanter material or not. “I thought you liked studying.”

“I do,” Joanie says, and flips open a book to a marked page. “But those two,” they jerk their thumb over their shoulder at Margaret and Sarah at the table behind them, “don’t seem to know how to study quietly.” And with that, Joanie immediately sinks into their studies, the outside world forgotten.

Ariadne tries, but her own concentration has been shot since Michael sat down. Instead of looking for insight into fire mines, she finds herself wondering exactly what’s involved in the enchanter exams. She’d never considered it before, hadn’t even thought of teaching formally, but she trusts Michael’s judgement - and he wouldn’t have suggested it to her if he hadn’t spoken to Cora first, and she trusts Cora even more. 

She stares down at her parchment and notes again. Scribbles, mostly, with diagrams and glyph drawings - none of which have helped, and none of which she can focus on. She’s always quick to distraction for the few days after All Soul’s. The paper lanterns released to rise through the crisp, early autumn air are meant to help let go of the dead, but she finds that they only serve to remind her of the dead - the dead she knows, but can’t remember beyond a burning house, and a forgotten stuffed nug with one button eye. 

Between All Soul’s last weekend and Michael’s interruption, she’ll be lucky if she manages even five more minutes of studying before dinner. Ariadne sighs, drops her pencil, and looks up. She watches Margaret and Sarah, catching bits and pieces of their idle gossip.

As if summoned, the two women abandon their own table to join Ariadne and Joanie. 

With an exaggerated sigh, Sarah flings herself onto the bench. “I miss Daniel.” 

“We know,” Joanie says without looking up, and shoves the first book away from them only to drag another closer.

Sarah ignores Joanie and drops her bag on the floor; it makes the kind of solid thump that can only come from being full of books. “And I hate Blinding Terror.”

“So do most people,” Ariadne says with a smirk.

Sarah looks at Ariadne through her hair. She exhales, and blows her hair out of her face. “It’s a spell,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “I can turn a rabbit into a walking bomb, but can’t instill blinding terror into anything.”

Ariadne bites her tongue - _she_ thought it was clever, at least - and wonders just how someone practices a spell called _blinding terror_. Maybe Sarah practices on the rats that took up residence in the dungeons this spring; though they largely keep to themselves in the lower levels, the rats have refused to leave despite the wards and spells Cora and Ruth put on the outer walls, and despite the cats the apprentices lured in with saucers of milk.

Joanie looks up from their notes. “Did you at least take the spell -”

“Off of the rabbit? Yes, the rabbit is safe.”

“Good,” Joanie says. “Because what this place needs is exploding rabbits.”

“Undead roosters were bad enough,” Ariadne says. She certainly hadn’t thought so at the time, but the nine undead roosters her first night were an appropriate introduction to Blackrock Tower.

“So was that possessed talking parrot Samuel had for a while,” Margaret adds, shining her apple on her robe. She half-sits on the table.

“Oh,” Sarah says, and makes a face, “I’m glad Lydia finally managed to reverse the spell on that thing.”

Ignoring them all again, Joanie opens and closes their hand in a frustrated fist. “This should work,” they grumble.

“You’ve been working on that for a year.” Margaret takes a crunchy bite out of her apple. “Might be time to move on?” she suggests around a mouthful of fruit.

Joanie glares at Margaret, and turns their attention back to Sarah and the original topic. “Stop pouting. He’ll be back from Nevarra soon enough.”

“And then he’ll leave again.”

“You’re the one who had to have feelings for a boy who likes dead things,” Margaret says, gesturing aimlessly with her apple. She squints over the top of Sarah’s head. “Jorah’s two days in the ground, we have a new templar already?”

Ariadne and Sarah turn, and follow Margaret’s gaze at the new templar and Ser Liselle giving him a tour. He’s taller than Ariadne, older too, with light skin tanned from the late summer sun, and dark hair. He turns and the torch light catches on his armor; parts of his chestplate gleam more than others, and Ariadne wonders how long before Edward points out the inconsistent polishing.

“Christopher something,” Sarah says. “Lock...smith? Lockland? I wasn’t really paying attention. I have another year to go before I can even apply for a Mortalitasi apprenticeship. They only take five a year from outside Nevarra, and I need to know how to cast blinding terror if I’m going to be one of those five.” She squares her shoulders defensively and levels a brief, and not unfriendly, glare at Margaret. “I like dead things too, you know,” she says quietly.  “And have since before I met Daniel.”

Margaret raises her hands in surrender. “That must’ve made you a pretty weird twelve year-old, but consider the subject dropped.”

Joanie groans and makes a strangling motion with their hands. “Would you two both kindly leave me alone in peace to finish this?”

Ariadne stifles a laugh. Unlike Joanie, she’s given up on studying for the rest of the afternoon.

Sarah softens, and turns her attention to Joanie. “In the year you’ve been trying to perfect that pain draught, you have made several varieties of toxic sludge, burned off your eyebrows, and exploded a laboratory. Twice. I’m with Margaret. You might need to face the reality that the original potion is as effective as it’s going to be.”

Joanie glances up at Sarah. “How are your ribs, by the way? I heard Mari kicked your ass in practice yesterday.”

Sarah blinks. “Fine, why?”

“Any bruising, or pain?”

“Only a little...” she trails off as realization dawns upon her. “That awful-tasting stuff Octavia gave me was _yours_?”

Joanie grins smugly. “You’re feeling better than normal, aren’t you?”

Ariadne disguises a laugh as a cough. She’s heard from Lily that Joanie’s version of the pain potion, while tasting terrible, has earned a spot on the infirmary’s shelf for standard potions.

Sarah’s eyes narrow, though she's smiling. “Fix the taste, and then we’ll talk.”

***

Lily looks out her window at the cold grey dusk sky and draws Ariadne’s arm tighter around her shoulders. The fire’s burning bright and warm, and Ariadne’s warm beside her, but winter is well on its way to Ostwick early this year. She doesn’t doubt they’ll have snow before Kingsway’s over. She leans into Ariadne, shifting on the small pile of pillows they’ve tossed on top of the rug so they can sit in front of the fire without sitting on the stone floor.

She should have told Ariadne before now, but the timing hadn’t felt right. That’s a terrible excuse, and she’s been making it for a month; every chance she’s had to tell Ariadne, and she’s had many, she’s found some reason not to - other people were around and they had no good exit, Ariadne looked so happy and she hadn’t wanted to ruin it, there were oranges at breakfast, it was a Tuesday. She’s about to start packing, and with as much time as the two of them spend in her room, Ariadne’s bound to notice books and other things disappearing into bags. She leaves in a week and she’s rapidly running out of time to tell Ariadne in private before it becomes too late and she overhears something in the hallways or notices the packing or, even worse, it’s suddenly the morning that she leaves. 

“I’m leaving Ostwick,” she says quietly.

Ariadne stiffens beside her. “What?”

“I’ve told you that I don’t want to heal just bodies, but minds.” She waits for Ariadne’s nod before she continues. “There’s no one here who can help me with that, but there’s a senior enchanter at Wycome who’s willing to take me in as an apprentice now that I’m eighteen.”

“But you’ll be back, right?”

In that moment, Ariadne sounds so scared and so uncertain that Lily nearly changes her mind about going. But she doesn’t change her mind, she can’t. “It would be years, if they’d even let me come back.” It’s half a lie to try to soften the blow: Cora had made very clear that this wouldn’t be a temporary transfer for training, but a permanent move.

After a long while of silence, Ariadne whispers, “We can’t,” she stops suddenly, her voice catching in her throat. She picks at the blue carpet underneath them. “We can’t be... _us_ after you leave. There’d be too many questions, someone would find out.”

She isn’t saying anything that Lily doesn’t already know, and Lily wraps her arm around Ariadne’s waist. Ariadne’s just voicing the undeniable fact that they both understand: once Lily leaves, the feelings they have for each other may linger, but the relationship they’ve built cannot. 

Lily thought making this horrible decision was the hard part. But it’s so much worse, so _unimaginably_ worse listening to Ariadne realize that all the hugs and held hands, all the kisses and laughter in bed, all the heads rested on shoulders and smiles across the breakfast table, everything they once thought they had in infinite quantity is now counting down to the last one.

It’s the right decision, she knows that in her gut. Octavia and Ruth cannot teach her what she needs to know, and not even Ariadne’s love is enough to fill the void left by not learning everything she can. It’s a terrible decision that hurts like hell, and she can’t even begin to comprehend how much she’s hurt Ariadne with this, but it’s the right choice for her. 

The fire flickers as a gust of wind blows in from outside. With a twitch of her fingers, Ariadne settles the flames. “When do you leave?”

“Next week.”

“And you’re telling me _now_?” Ariadne pulls away and shifts so she’s looking at Lily, and though she’s tried so hard to steel herself for this moment, Lily’s heart starts to break: Ariadne looks utterly betrayed. “How long have you known?”

Lily pauses. She considers lying, and pretending she’s only been concealing this for a week, but she loves Ariadne too much not to tell her the truth. “About a month.”

Ariadne rises to her feet and slowly walks over to the window. She wraps her arms around herself as she stares outside at the sea and the rapidly-falling night.

“I’m sorry.” Lily swallows back tears she doesn’t feel she has any right to shed. Though this is even more painful than when she was taken away to the Circle, she knows it’s for the best - for _her_. Ariadne is the one being left behind.

“You could’ve told me sooner.” Ariadne’s voice is thick with her own tears. She rubs a hand across her cheeks and hugs herself tighter, still looking out the window.

She _should_  have told her sooner; Ariadne deserved to know as soon as she’d decided to leave, not just a week before. But Lily couldn’t give voice to the words, couldn’t force the harsh reality onto both of them before today. She takes a shaky breath when she realizes that Ariadne isn’t trying to make her stay. “You’re not gonna try to talk me out of it?” She doesn’t want Ariadne to try.

Ariadne laughs - a short, humorless noise. “No,” she shakes her head. She exhales sharply. “I want to, but.” She bites her lip.

“Ari…”

Suddenly, Ariadne turns around and strides back to the rug in front of the fire. She falls to her knees and cups Lily’s cheeks, drawing her into a passionate kiss. 

Lily leans into the kiss, and pretends she hasn’t seen the tears on Ariadne’s cheeks. Ariadne lifts up onto her knees, towering over her as she slips her tongue between Lily’s lips. Lily wraps her arms around Ariadne’s shoulders, pulling her closer. A warm, familiar throbbing begins between Lily’s legs as Ariadne slides her hands down Lily’s back and slowly guides her down to the floor.

Ariadne pulls away once Lily’s lying beneath her, and gently plucks Lily’s glasses from her face and sets them safely aside, perhaps for the last time. Such an easy, unconscious gesture, and tears fill Lily’s eyes at the thought of never again feeling Ariadne’s fingers on her cheek - a safe and warm reminder, just before her world turns a little blurry, that she is not alone.

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispers.

Lily reaches up and brushes a new set of tears from Ariadne’s cheeks. “I know. But I have to.”

“I know.” Ariadne bows her head and presses the gentlest of kisses to Lily’s lips. 

Relief washes over Lily, but guilt floods in immediately after. She has learning and magic to look forward to once the pain of leaving Ariadne recedes, but Ariadne will be left behind, alone. She swallows. No amount of magic in the world can soothe the heartbreak she sees in Ariadne’s eyes.

Caressing her thumb across Ariadne’s cheek, Lily watches the firelight reflect in Ariadne’s green eyes. They may not have forever anymore, but they have a week.

***

Though the late autumn breeze is brisk and chilly, early morning sun shines on the day Lily leaves. 

Ariadne tugs her robes tighter around her shoulders, warding off the cold as she stands on the tower’s steps. Selfishly, she doesn’t want Lily to go. She wants Lily to be content with what Octavia and Ruth can teach, even though she wouldn’t be content to stay either if she wanted more than what Michael had to offer. She wants Lily to stay so she doesn’t have to remember what life was like six years ago, before she was eating breakfast with Lily trying hard to fall asleep across the table. She tried to come up with reasons to transfer to Wycome with Lily, to be with her and stay by her side even in a tower that didn’t turn such a blind eye toward relationships like theirs. But none of those reasons would hold up under scrutiny, and she cannot - _will not_ \- hold Lily back.

And so she stands on the tower’s steps, biting her lip to hold back tears as Lily leads her horse out of the stables.

_Lily, giving her an apple to stash for later, in case she gets hungry. Lily, drawing her a map of the staircases, a map she still needs sometimes._

_Lily, golden skin glowing in the light of the Chantry, small smile on her lips after she kisses her for the first time. Lily, throwing a pillow as if that’ll stop morning from coming. Lily, crown of flowers upon her head, laughing in the Summerday sunshine as she tugs her behind a tree. Lily, staying awake long into the night, making sure she comes back alive from her Harrowing._

_Lily, smiling up at her the first time they make love, touching her with such reverence. Lily, making faces at her in the library. Lily, smiling in delight at the tiny flock of fiery birds she’d sent flying around her._

_Lily, last night, pressing herself as close as she can, holding on tight._

Ariadne wipes at her cheeks and takes the final two steps down. Lily moves first, pulling her into a hug. Wrapping her arms around her, Ariadne holds Lily tightly - she never wants to let go. She threads her fingers through Lily’s hair and kisses the top of her head before resting her cheek where her lips touched. In desperate attempt to control her tears, despite the telltale shake to Lily’s shoulders and the dampening shoulder of her robes, Ariadne takes a deep breath. Lavender, always lavender.

“Breathe in,” Lily whispers, “breathe out.” Her voice shakes - the words are as much for herself as they are for Ariadne.

This final hug won’t mean more than any of the others, but it has to be enough to last.

“I love you,” Lily says, hardly louder than a breath.

Ariadne rests her forehead against Lily’s; the words should warm her from the inside out, the way they have in the past, but this morning they cause a lump to form in her throat. “I love you too,” she whispers, wishing she’d said it more often. She nuzzles Lily’s cheek, and then steps away. If she doesn’t break the hug now, she never will. With one last squeeze of Lily’s hands, she lets go. “Travel safe.”

Lily nods and wipes at her cheeks. “I will.”

Though this is goodbye, Ariadne can’t bring herself to say the word. She takes another uneasy step back. Lily doesn’t say the word either, only gives her one last watery smile before turning to walk back to her horse, where Sophia and Liselle are waiting to escort her to Wycome.

A sob escapes Ariadne’s lips once Lily’s halfway across the courtyard, and she covers her mouth as her shoulders start to shake. Lily grows smaller and smaller as she rides further away, until Ariadne can’t make out the horses and riders anymore. She wraps her arms around herself in a poor imitation of the hug she so desperately wants from the woman who just rode away, and closes her eyes, allowing her tears to fall freely.

“Come inside,” Cora says after a moment. Her hand on Ariadne’s shoulder is warm and sympathetic as she gently turns Ariadne back toward the steps and the tower. “Let’s have some breakfast, and discuss Knight Enchanters.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The passage of time. The start of good things, the start of unexpected things, and signs of bad things to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to thievinghippo for wondrous beta work, and whose comments on this chapter helped me uncover something very vital about Ariadne that I hadn't thought of before. And to bloomingcnidarians, who has supported me in this story long before I even started posting.

Eight months have passed, and she still feels Lily’s absence every day. But the Lily-shaped hole in her heart heals a little more with each day, and dragging herself out of bed isn’t quite as much of a chore as it used to be - and not entirely because Joanie will throw a bucket of ice-cold water over her head again if she doesn’t.

The smooth mahogany table tucked into a southern window alcove has been Ariadne’s second home since she was fourteen. Only enchanters studying for their senior enchanter exams are allowed permanent desks in the libraries, but it’s been five years and nobody’s complained that Ariadne leaves books and notes out overnight. She likes this spot - all the way on the edge of a library section no one visits, high ceilings with a sunny window close to the ocean, and far enough away from the central fireplace that she doesn’t get too hot. 

It’s safer in the library. Memories of Lily are scattered throughout the tower, but there are fewer here: Lily usually left her alone to study.

Today, two weeks before Summerday, she sits at her table, but isn’t allowed her books or notes. There’s a Chantry-assigned proctor sitting in the corner, watching her.

Cora’s her sponsor, vouching for her physical and magical capabilities, as well as her integrity, but she has to prove her faith all on her own to become a Knight Enchanter. She’s known the Chant inside and out since she was a child, and the prospect of a written exam hadn’t worried her in the least. She’d studied, certainly, and brushed up on canticles she’s less familiar with, reviewed her notes on Brother Gentivi and Revered Mothers Hevara and Juliette, among others. But compared to the myriad of challenging topics that she will undoubtedly face during her enchanter’s exams next year, a day of being tested on the Chant was hardly daunting. 

She’d breezed through the early sections, matching lines with canticle and verse, identifying dissonant from canonical in three different languages, and she’s now working through the open-ended questions: from historical significance to analytical interpretation, she’s been writing nonstop for two hours and her hand’s beginning to cramp.

Ariadne stops as she reads the final question: it asks her for a verse, and a reason for that verse, that she would hold in her heart and mind as a Knight Enchanter. She takes a breath and stretches her arms over her head, and leans to each side, holding the stretch. She’d love to take a proper break, to stand up and walk around - her hand isn’t the only thing that’s hurting - but the proctor informed her at the beginning that this was meant to be taken in a single sitting. She rotates her wrist and stretches her fingers and reads the question again. 

_Knight Enchanters draw strength and resolve from their faith. Most choose a single verse as the thesis of their training and devotion, and keep that verse with them at all times. If you were to become a Knight Enchanter, what verse would you choose to keep in your heart in mind? What is its significance to you?_

She bites her lip. She loves the Chant, the _whole_ Chant. To force her to pick just one verse seems cruel, yet she understands. In the heat of battle, she should have one thing to cling to, one verse that shines brighter than all the rest to give her strength.

Her first instinct is Transfigurations: _The Veil holds no uncertainty for her, and she will know no fear of death, for the Maker shall be her beacon and her shield, her foundation and her sword_. She mouths the words silently to herself, rolls them around in her mind, but they don’t sit quite right. Though the verse is lovely and she does feel very deeply that the Maker will protect her in all things, it isn’t the right verse for her.

She tries Exaltations next, _Look! Look upon the Light so you may lead others here through the darkness, Blade of the Faith!_ She immediately shakes her head. Though she’s loved that whole verse since the day she first read it, it doesn’t feel right either. Andraste’s words are encouraging and inspiring, certainly, yet they fail to resonate with her in the way the question suggests they should.

And then Benedictions comes to her. _Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. In their blood, the Maker’s will is written._

The verse settles into her, and she feels it spreading through her veins. The words wrap their way around her bones, weave between her ribs, and curl up the length of her spine. _Yes_ , she thinks to herself, and begins to write.

***

Ariadne gets the letter at breakfast on the 17th of Justinian, the morning of her twentieth birthday. She carries it with her all day, and doesn’t open it until past midnight, just in case it’s bad news. It won’t make the bad news any better, but it at least won’t be bad news on her birthday. But when she opens the envelope and reads the letter, she breaks into a wide grin.

She’s been officially accepted into Knight Enchanter training. 

She’ll be an apprentice for five years, the letter says, and her sponsor will train her. At the end of the five years, she will be a full Knight Enchanter, in service to the Chantry, if and when she is needed. Her world’s been slowly realigning itself since Lily left, gradually coming back into focus as the ache dims every day. After reading the letter twice more, she feels her world shift and snap back into place a little more than usual.

The victory feels a bit hollow without Lily to join in her excitement, but she shares the letter with her friends the next morning. Joanie gives her a rare hug, and Margaret stands on a bench to announce it to everyone, and Mari and Sarah ask about a thousand questions to distract her from the embarrassment of having the whole tower focused on her, and it’s almost enough to forget that Lily isn’t here.

By the time Kingsway passes and Lily’s been gone a full year, Ariadne feels steadier. Not as solid as she once was with Lily at her side, but balanced on her feet again. The instinct to look across the table at breakfast to smile at Lily didn’t disappear overnight, but one day near the end of Harvestmere, with Lily gone a little over a year, Ariadne realizes she’s gone a full week without expecting Lily opposite her every morning.

Cora, it seems, was not reciting platitudes when she told Ariadne to give it time.

***

Ariadne lands flat on her back on the frozen ground, hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs. After four months of training, she’s finally managed to create a spirit blade and learned how to hold it, but any idea of how to _fight_ with it has so far escaped her. She coughs, catching her breath, and stares up at the clear blue sky. Her breath hangs in the air in wispy clouds as she slowly breathes in and out, trying to contain her frustration. 

Cora appears in her line of sight, towering over her. “Get up,” she orders, not unkindly, and offers Ariadne her hand.

She takes Cora’s hand, and lets Cora pull her up to standing. Bits of frozen grass stick to her bare arms, and she brushes them away while avoiding Cora’s eyes. Four times Cora’s tried that attack this morning, and four times Ariadne’s faltered and ended up on the ground. 

“Focus,” Cora says. “You’re trying to fight with a blade the same you do as a staff.”

“There’s no weight to it,” Ariadne says. She’s been stymied by the blade since she first managed to form one two weeks ago. Staves are solid, have weight in her hand. When she swings a staff through the air, there’s momentum and _pull_ she counters by shifting her hips. A staff has impact when it connects with her target, a firm thud that travels through the wood to her hands and arms and shoulders. 

Even if she hadn’t been fighting with the same staff for years, she could pick up any staff off the ground and in a moment know how heavy it is and how long; practice has taught her how to judge the length and weight and instinctively know how high to lift the staff so her attack will hit a shoulder, or a thigh, or a ribcage. When she’s boxed in, her back to a wall, she can flip the end of her staff up and catch it with her empty hand and use it to _push_. She trusts the wood to be strong enough to hold a two-handed block against any attack, and that trust comes from _feeling_ the staff in her hands - the smooth worn wood under her palms, the pleasant burn in her upper arms that develops as she swings the rod throughout the fight, the low ache in her shoulders when she uses the staff to brace against an attack.

A spirit blade is... _nothing_. Nothing to hold, nothing to carry the sword through an attack, nothing to impact a target. She feels like a child, playing at being a knight by swinging her empty hands through the air, pretending to fight with a sword that only exists in her mind. 

Cora tilts her head and gives Ariadne a look that makes her feel like she’s missing something terribly obvious. “Then _give_ it weight,” she suggests, voice strong and encouraging, without a hint of condescension. “You conjured it, you control it,” she repeats the phrase Ariadne has committed to memory since she passed her Harrowing. 

_Despite what templars and the Chantry would have you think,_ Michael had said, _magic does not have a mind of its own. If you were able to conjure it, you are able to control it._

Cora rotates her wrist in a circle, demonstrating. Her wrists snaps around faster on the downswing, brought down by the weight and gravity of her own spirit blade. The blade hums through the air with an audible vibration that’s been grating on Ariadne’s nerves all afternoon.

Ariadne closes her eyes and takes a measured breath in through her nose; letting her frustration get the better of her won’t help matters. _Deep breath in, hold, slowly breathe out._ She repeats the cycle five times. The Fade tingles at her fingertips and when she breathes in again, its slightly-smoky scent fills her nose. She curls her fingers into a fist and then opens her palm.

Her spirit blade shimmers into existence, its hilt tight in her hand. She steps away from Cora and tests the sword’s balance with a careful swing. The blade is still too light; she pushes more magic into it, tugging material away from the Fade until the blade feels solid and sturdy, _real_ in her grip. She swings the blade through a series of attacks and counters against the air, both one-handed and two-handed, to test the balance again. It makes a similar humming noise to Cora’s, but this time feels comfortable against her skin; it’s her own magic, not someone else’s.

The blade is still a weapon with only one end, and she can’t spin it to build momentum as she’s used to, and she certainly can’t grasp it in the middle, but at least the balance is right. The rest will come. Satisfied, she turns back to Cora.

Cora takes up her position again. “Shall we try another round?”

Ariadne shakes out her shoulders and nods, mirroring Cora’s posture. They’ve dulled the edges of their blades for practice, but even a dull blade leaves bruises. She re-energizes her barrier, and Cora does the same. This time, when Cora attacks, she lifts her own blade to block Cora’s and it feels _right_. The blade has familiar heft; she’s still fighting the urge to twist and twirl the blade like she would her staff, but the weight of it at least is something she knows. She steps to the side, out of the attack, and brings her sword down.

“Well done,” Cora praises. She steps into the space Ariadne vacated and swings her sword inward, toward Ariadne’s exposed flank.

Instinct takes over and Ariadne twists her wrist in a way that would bring her staff up, perpendicular to the ground, and fully block the attack. But where she’d double grip the middle of her staff for a fight like this and have two ends to work with, her sword only has one and she misjudges the angle of the attack. Cora’s sword easily slides over the top of hers to whack her side with the blade’s dulled edge.

“Stop fighting with a staff, Ari.” Cora attacks again, effortless as always.

Another inefficient block weakening her barrier, another bruise blooming on her ribs. 

Attack. Failed block. Attack. Failed block. Her barrier falls completely, and it’s all she can do to keep up with Cora’s attacks - she doesn’t have the focus to spare for even a simple barrier.

Cora keeps pushing until they’re all the way across the courtyard, almost up beside the tower again. 

Frustrated again, even more than before, she’s breathing hard and bruised nearly everywhere she can imagine. Ariadne dodges Cora’s next attack without even trying to block it. She uses the brief moment to dissolve her spirit blade into a ball of pure magic in her palms, and compresses it as tight and dense as she can. When Cora steps in for another attack, Ariadne releases the ball, blasting the magic - and Cora - away from her.

At the sound of applause, Ariadne turns and finds Liselle, Ferdinand, and Christopher watching. One Knight Enchanter training another - even under Edward’s command, and even though it’s Cora - requires supervision. She’s had an audience for combat practice since she was young and she’s no longer self-conscious with others watching while she falls on her rear, though usually there are only two templars.

She lifts her hand in a hesitant wave at the three of them, and then walks the few steps over to Cora, expecting to be reprimanded for not using her blade.

Instead, Cora’s smiling as she dusts off her robes and stands. “You’ve finally realized it’s not entirely about the blade.”

Ariadne tilts her head in confusion.

Cora dissolves her own blade back into the Fade. “Though the spirit blade is a Knight Enchanter’s primary weapon, it is not our _only_ weapon. Mages who fail to remember that tend not to make it very far in their training. Your training will focus heavily on the blade before we move on, but all of your magic is at your disposal in a true fight. Although,” she adds with a wry smile, stretching her neck first to the left, then to the right, “I would appreciate it if you tried not to consider our sparring to be a true fight.”

“I’m sorry,” Ariadne apologizes. There had been quite a lot of magic in her blade, and she’s a little dizzy from expending it all in one blast. Though the magic blew outward from her in all directions, there was enough to have knocked Cora hard.

They turn to face each other, and rest their hands on the other’s shoulders as they lean their foreheads together. Training session completed for the day, they walk side-by-side back toward the tower.

“Good job,” Christopher says, awkwardly stepping forward to congratulate Ariadne.

“Thanks,” she responds hesitantly, still unsure why he was present. She shrugs it off - Edward’s been trying new rotations lately, maybe he’s having Christopher learn combat supervision.

A rising crisis with a new apprentice pulls Cora away as soon as they step inside, and Liselle and Ferdinand have their own duties to attend to, leaving Ariadne and Christopher alone in the hallway. Though she turns to walk up to her room to change before lunch, Christopher’s voice gives her pause and she turns back around.

“You’re a good fighter,” he starts.

Ariadne can hear the _but_ even before he says so, and squares her shoulders. She’s far less likely to listen to him about combat advice than Cora, or her friends, or any of the templars who have trained her since she was a child. 

“But you leave yourself open to attack far too often. Keep your elbows in,” he demonstrates, “and it will be harder to land a hit on your flank.”

The advice isn’t new to her - she’s been hearing it from Ferdinand since she first picked up a quarterstaff when she was fourteen - and she clenches her jaw in annoyance. Combat coordination is hard enough for her without thinking where her elbows are supposed to go; it’s easier to be quicker and stronger. “Thank you,” she says, managing to keep most of the irritation from her voice. He doesn’t know she’s heard the same thing for the past six years. 

Without further hesitation, she turns and heads up the stairs before he can give her any more unwanted and obvious advice.

***

Once in the solitude of her room with the door shut firmly behind her, Ariadne sinks down into the chair, exhausted. She props her elbows on her knees and rests her forehead in her hands.

Wind blows through the small chimes hanging in the window, a birthday gift from Lily last year. The tiny copper pipes clink against each other, tinkling happy and bright. Winter has very much arrived and she should probably shut her window to keep out the oncoming snow, but her room is stifling with the window closed. 

Ariadne closes her eyes. _Breathe in, breathe out_ , she hears in Lily’s voice. She has good days and she has bad days, and while the good vastly outnumber the bad, sometimes all it takes is something small - like the tinkle of wind chimes - to bring grey clouds to a good day even now, after a year.

She looks up at the chimes and watches them dance in the wind. Sun catches in the crystal hanging from the bottom, casting patterned rainbows across the stone walls. She takes three even breaths. “I miss you,” she admits out loud to the empty room.

After a moment, she nods to herself. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.” Maybe if she says it enough times, it’ll be true. She exhales sharply and forces herself to stand and change out of her sparring gear. There’s no time for a bath, even a quick one, before she’s needed downstairs to assist with preparing Satinalia celebrations for the festival next week. A cloth and the basin in her room will have to do.

***

Ariadne lifts her hand and knocks twice on the closed door to Cora’s office. She hears the Satinalia fireworks start outside, fireworks she and Quentin designed together but that she doesn’t get to see. She wants to be outside, wants to listen to the cheers and see the delight on everyone’s faces when the fireworks explode into dragons and griffons. But she woke this morning to a note slipped under her door. Cora requested her presence after dinner, and she can’t ignore Cora, no matter how proud she is of the griffon’s flapping wings.

It’s a strange request, both in the delivery and the timing. She’s never received a formal note before, not to mention one surreptitiously slipped under her door while she was asleep. Everyone’s outside for the fireworks, and most everyone is too drunk to notice Ariadne and their First Enchanter missing, but Cora knows that Ariadne has worked on these fireworks for months.

“Come in,” Cora’s voice calls, a bit muffled, from inside.

The door swings open silently, and Ariadne makes sure it closes behind her. Cora isn’t alone. A woman - another First Enchanter, by the robes - stands beside the fire with her back turned to the door as she looks out the window at the fireworks; taller than Cora, though not as tall as Ariadne, with auburn hair twisted into a bun low on her neck.

The woman turns, her sharp features accentuated by the flames. She’s paler than Cora, with skin matching Ariadne’s own. She looks Ariadne up and down, and Ariadne counts to ten to keep from fidgeting under the older woman’s stare. The woman turns to Cora.

“Is this her?”

Ariadne feels like she’s been found lacking. She straightens her shoulders. Not defiantly, she wouldn’t dare in Cora’s presence or with someone Cora clearly considers a friend, but enough to make herself stand just a bit taller.

“Ariadne Trevelyan, meet First Enchanter Adelaide Darçon, of Hercinia,” Cora introduces them.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Ariadne says, and offers her hand in greeting.

Adelaide smiles tightly and takes her hand, holding her grip loosely and only for a moment. 

“Have a seat, Ariadne.” Cora gestures to the three chairs pulled around the fire.

Never in six years has Ariadne seen three chairs all cleared of books at the same time in Cora’s office. She sits on the chair closest to the window.

“We need your assistance,” Cora says, sitting on the chair in the middle. Adelaide remains standing. “But first, I need your promise that what I am about to tell you will not be repeated, nor discussed, outside this room.”

Ariadne nods. “Of course.”

“Adelaide and I need you to do some research.”

“Wycome really is the Circle with the library we need but the Chantry is keeping a close eye on Gregoria these days,” Adelaide says, refilling her glass of wine, and then Cora’s. She doesn't fill one for Ariadne. “They replaced most of Irem’s templars last month without warning. Their control is shaky at best for the moment, and thus we are first going to try with Ostwick.” Though she doesn’t roll her eyes, it’s implied with her tone. 

Ariadne’s pulse quickens at the mention of Wycome and potential trouble there. She sets her questions aside for a moment. “Is Lily…”

Cora holds up her hand. “Lily is fine, I guarantee you. The issue is complex, but I assure you it does not affect Lily.”

Adelaide snorts, but it’s a ladylike snort. “The issue isn’t _complex_ , the issue is that the Chantry thinks we’re up to something, but doesn’t have the stones to try to unseat either you or me. Gregoria’s the easy target, that’s all.”

“Adelaide,” Cora says, her tone the one she uses when an apprentice is being particularly fussy. 

“You’re bringing the girl in on it, Cora. She ought to know _why_ you’re sending her on this wild goose chase.”

Ariadne squints, trying to follow a conversation she’s missing many vital pieces of. A firework booms outside, turning into a purple dragon when it explodes. “What, exactly, do you need me to find for you?”

Cora and Adelaide share a look, but before Ariadne can discern what it means, Cora’s attention is on her again. Adelaide steps to the other side of the room, giving the two of them privacy.

“The Circle system is broken,” Cora says softly. “Edward and I have worked hard to fix it here, but most other Circles are not so lucky. The templars have abused their power, and the Chantry has allowed that. They turn a blind eye to mages treated like prisoners, sometimes _worse_ than prisoners, and justify it with a single line from the Chant.”

“ _Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him,_ ” Ariadne quotes. She heard it nearly every day that she lived in the Chantry. It never bothered her much, not even when she found out she was a mage and was brought to the Circle; she only takes it to mean that they shouldn’t become like Tevinter, though she knows it’s a common cry against any and all mages.

Cora nods. “And this, above all else, is what must remain in this room: there is a plan in motion to reform the Circles, and take them out of the Chantry’s supervision. All mages have a right to live in Circles such as Ostwick and Hercinia, not just those who are lucky enough to live nearby.”

Ariadne’s heart starts to pound, as images from the past years flash through her mind. Cora absent from holidays, an honored guest absent with her. Octavia changing back from a raven, on an errand for Cora away from the Circle, without a templar escort. Edward reminding his templars of rules mages are to follow, within earshot of every mage who needs to hear it, just before they have visitors. She bites the inside of her cheek as her stomach flip-flops. 

Both the Chantry and the Circle have been her home, solid rocks of support when her life turns upside down, and rising against either is unimaginable to her. And yet Cora seems determined to change both of them in ways Ariadne can’t even begin to fathom. She swallows and tries to keep her voice even. “What do you mean by _plan_?”

Fireworks pop and boom in rapid succession - the grand finale. Cora’s office turns shades of green, then purple, then red, then blue, then all colors at once as the remaining fireworks explode in the night sky.

Cora glances away, just for a moment, and for the first time since she arrived at the tower, Ariadne thinks she sees hesitation in her First Enchanter. But when Cora looks back, her face is clear. “Rebellion, Ariadne. Chaos is the last thing anyone involved wants, and so we will not move until all the pieces are in place. But this plan has been in motion since long before you were born, and _will_ come to pass.”

Ariadne swallows hard and bites her lip, taking in all of Cora’s words. Cheers and applause erupt outside when the fireworks finally stop.

“I know you love the Chantry, Ari,” Cora says softly, just barely audible over the noise from the courtyard, “and I’m not asking you to abandon your beliefs. All I’m asking is that you look in the library for me. You’re a talented researcher - if it’s there, I know you can find it.”

The temptation to decline is strong, nearly irresistible, but this is _Cora_. The woman who allowed her to hide away with books when she was scared of her magic, the woman who brought her to Orlais just so she could see the Grand Cathedral, the woman who didn’t say a word when she stayed in bed for three days after Lily left. 

The Chantry provided her a home, and so has Cora, but only Cora has cared for her. Ariadne takes a deep breath. “What do you need?”

Cora’s shoulders relax, fractionally, and Ariadne hadn’t even noticed that she was tense until now.

“This will not be a popular movement with the Chantry, nor most of Thedas,” she says. “If there is any document in scripture or history that would disavow the current system, it would be of assistance.”

“It won’t endear us to anyone who isn’t already our ally,” Adelaide says, rejoining the conversation, “but if it is from the Chant or a respectable enough person, it _might_ dissuade certain parties from taking an... _active_ opposition to our cause.”

Ariadne nods, slowly. She’s known since the trip to Val Royeaux three years ago that Ostwick was the anomaly, and not the other way around. Giving other mages the chance to live without the fear she saw so plainly on the faces of the White Spire’s mages is a worthwhile endeavor. It feels strange, embarking on a path the Chantry would vehemently disapprove of, but she trusts Cora to lead her safely down the path. “I will see what I can find,” she says.

“Thank you,” Cora says, and reaches across the space between them to clasp Ariadne’s hands with hers. She squeezes gently, smiles, and releases her hands. “I’m sorry I made you miss your fireworks.”

“There’s always next year,” Ariadne says wistfully. She’d wanted to be there to see Mari’s surprise when the fiery griffons dove for the ocean, and Joanie’s grin when the dragons fought across the sky, but she supposes that’s only incentive to outdo herself next Satinalia.

“Indeed there is.” Cora rises. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Adelaide and I have other business to attend to. I’m sure your friends are looking for you.”

Knowing a firm dismissal when she hears it, Ariadne stands as well. “I’m sure they are.” She turns to Adelaide. “It was nice to meet you,” she says, and slips out the door Cora holds open for her.

***

Ariadne sneezes, and pushes the book aside. The likelihood of finding anything for Cora in any of the Chant, even the Dissonant Verses, was slim, but it was worth looking.

While the first snow of the season continues to fall outside, Ariadne sits in a back corner of the sixth floor library, surrounded by Chantry texts. For the first time in her life, they cannot help with what she’s looking for. The words are still comforting, and always will be, but she’s searching for something very specific, and for someone else. She’s done no small amount of turning scripture on its head, looking at every verse from every angle she can imagine, trying to find a way to interpret even the smallest piece as _mages should be free from Chantry oversight._

The best she can offer is that she’s thus far found nothing that explicitly states the Chantry _should_ control mages, but she doubts that’s the kind of evidence Cora can use.

With a deep exhale, Ariadne scrubs her hands over her face. Three days of snow, three days of searching through books and manuscripts, and three days of nothing. But if it were that easy, they wouldn’t have needed her help.

“Frustrated?”

Christopher’s voice startles her, and she jumps. 

“Tired,” she lies as he walks over to her table. She is frustrated, yes, but admitting that will only invite more questions from him. She looks around for Lucy, the Tranquil who’s been helping her find books, but she’s nowhere to be found. Ariadne takes a quiet, centering breath. 

His eyes roam over the collection of books and papers she’s gathered. “What are you looking for?”

The second lie comes just as easy as the first. “There’s a verse of Silence I remember reading as a child. I can’t seem to find it again, though.”

“Silence is Dissonant,” he says, straightening his shoulders.

Ariadne stares at him, trying to determine if his words are a warning or a simple statement. “I know,” she says tightly; it borders on rude, she knows, but he interrupted her. “But I remember such a lovely verse.” She stands to stack up the books so Lucy can reshelve them easier.

But Christopher doesn’t take the hint and leave her alone. He stands still and watches her stack the books and organize the manuscripts. The scent of pine fills her nose as she passes him on her way out of the library down to the Hall for dinner.  

Ariadne suppresses a shudder halfway down the stairs; his armor clanks with every step he takes following her. She doesn’t turn to look, but she can feel him close behind her, barely two steps away. If he were to lose his balance, he’d certainly grab her for support. When Liselle draws Christopher’s attention away one floor down, needing his assistance to move something in the templar quarters, Ariadne doesn’t look behind her or acknowledge him when he bids her goodbye.

She hadn’t been looking for the verse in Silence, but neither had she forgotten it. _Magic could not undo what evil has done._ She hasn’t thought of that verse in years. The words stick in her mind, and anchor themselves to the inside of her skull; their roots spread out through bone, twisting themselves around the top of her spine. She shakes her head, but can’t dislodge the verse.

He turns a corner, and then so does she. The words settle into her with a purpose and determination she doesn’t quite understand, but she’s alone in the hallway now.

She sighs in relief. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _shadows fall_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the warning, as well as the rating increase.

Ariadne clenches her back teeth together and picks up another glass. This is the eighth day Ser Christopher has hovered over her while she charms all the glassware to sparkle and appear lit with fire from within. The charm is simple, though it requires her to charm each glass individually. Even while practicing the charm, she was never in any danger of exploding glass or setting anything important on fire. His observing presence serves mostly to distract her. 

Christopher may hover well, but he doesn’t stand still well. His sudden movements and clanking armor have led to six broken glasses over the past week. One glass cut her badly enough to require an infirmary visit.

“Is there no one else you could be watching?” she asks, setting down a champagne flute. “Them, perhaps?” She points to the storage room across the hall where Margaret and Mari put the finishing touches on the metal dragon and test its conductivity. If she understood the plan correctly, it will breathe lightning this year instead of fire like in years past. 

Mari jumps and swears, shaking out her hand before she sticks her finger in her mouth.

“You are far more fascinating,” he says. On the surface, his voice is pleasant enough, but there’s a dark twinge to his words that Ariadne doesn’t like at all.

Ariadne swallows an irritated noise in the back of her throat. Though she’d like to slam her current glass down onto the table in frustration, she’d not only break this one, but likely send a cascade of others crashing off the table. She doesn’t have that many spare glasses left, or that much time. Instead, she carefully sets the flute down beside the others she’s yet to finish, and takes a moment to school her features before she turns to face him. If she hadn’t spent the last two months in the library only to come up completely empty for Cora and Adelaide, she might not be quite as frustrated with Ser Christopher’s extensive hovering this week.

She doesn’t intend to be _mean_ , only clear.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” she lies, hoping that politeness will encourage him to leave, “but First Day is two days from now, and I have a lot of work to do.” She gestures at the table full of glasses still needing her attention.

Christopher shifts to attention and bows his head. “I understand. Perhaps afterward -”

“No,” she cuts him off. “It’s against the rules -”

It’s his turn to interrupt her. “That hasn’t stopped others.”

He nearly spits out the words, angry, and she’s taken aback. He must see the shock in her face for he immediately tries to recover his lost ground. “I am sorry, I only meant…”

She holds up a hand. “No. Even if it weren’t against the rules, I am uninterested. I prefer the company of women.” She pauses, allowing him a moment to understand her words; his eyes narrow briefly, but otherwise his face remains unchanged. “Now, if charming another three hundred glasses truly requires intense supervision, I would prefer you find one of your brethren. You fidget too much and I fear you’re going to knock one of the tables over.”

He nods, and though the glare he gives her turns Ariadne’s blood cold, he leaves. 

***

A few moments before midnight, the dragon hanging over the Great Hall shudders into life. Swerving on its chains, just like a true dragon would in flight, its great wings flap over the astonished partygoers below.

The large hourglass, moved from its usual spot in the main entryway to a platform at the front of the Hall, trickles down to its last grains of sand. A hush falls over the room, as hundreds of pairs of eyes focus on the hourglass, waiting. Glasses tinkle and the dragon creaks, but otherwise the Hall is silent.

From opposite sides of the Hall, Margaret and Mari whisper their incantation and move their staves in the pattern they’ve been practicing for weeks.

Though Ariadne knows what’s coming next, she holds her glass steady and looks upward in excitement and anticipation.

At precisely midnight, when the final grain of sand falls and the hourglass turns over, both women slam the ends of their staves into the stone floor. The air prickles against Ariadne’s skin, tiny little hairs on her arms all standing on end.

It begins from the dragon’s tail, a low crackling and rumble. The dragon shudders to life; its eyes glow a brilliant purple and its wings flap slowly through the air. It twists against the chains anchoring it to the ceiling. And then its mouth opens, releasing a great howl and breath of lightning across the Hall.

Most of the guests duck as they gasp in awe, though the lightning is safely far above their heads.

The dragon breathes twice more, huffing out bright storms of sparks and lightning, before it dims and slowly ceases its movements. It will be still for the next year, until First Day comes around again.

Applause breaks out, loud and thunderous, and Cora stands on the dais at the front and beckons Mari and Margaret forward to take their bows. 

“How do we get the dragon up there?” Joanie comes up next to Ariadne while Cora welcomes everyone to a new year and encourages continued merriment. “I’ve always wondered.”

“Ladders,” she says. She’d watched this morning through nearly-closed eyes as six templars had climbed atop six separate rickety ladders, hoisting the dragon by its chains to connect to the hooks bolted into the ceiling. “Very, very tall ladders.”

“That doesn’t sound very safe.”

“It wasn’t,” Emelie says, overhearing their conversation. Her armor’s so polished Ariadne can see her distorted reflection in the chest plate. “But it always looks good.” She turns to Ariadne. “The glasses are beautiful, by the way,” she lifts hers in acknowledgement, “well done.”

Ariadne beams. Though the glasses are charmed for every First Day, she’d been proud to see her own handiwork lifted up, the reflected torchlight mingling with her magical light from inside the glass. “Thank you.” She takes a sip of her champagne and spies Christopher across the hall, speaking to Ser Marcus. Christopher catches her glance, and glowers at her, though doesn’t break his conversation.

With a quick breath, she turns to Joanie and Emelie, placing her back to Christopher. Their conversation only lasts a few more minutes before Octavia finds them in the crowd and grabs Emelie’s hand; the two women laugh as they leave for some dark corner. Ariadne smiles, watching them go. Lily’s been at Wycome for over a year and mostly the ache has dimmed to an occasional dull throb; it doesn’t hurt so much anymore when she sees other people together. 

Even Daniel’s back, returned from the Mortalitasi for a few months, and he and Sarah aren’t even trying for propriety.

Joanie waves at Margaret and Mari pushing their way through the crowd, beckoning them to join them on the edges of the crowd.

“Alcohol first,” Margaret says, holding up a finger. She grabs three flutes from the table, hands one to Mari and keeps two for herself. She drains one before she even makes it over to her friends.

“That was pretty cool, yeah?” Mari says, drinking her champagne a little more slowly and carefully than Margaret. “I had the most convincing dream last night that none of it was going to work.”

“But it did!” Margaret says. She lifts her remaining glass up in a toast. “To First Day! And dragons that breathe lightning. And fiery glasses. And whatever Joanie did!”

The four all raise their glasses. With matching grins, they clink their flutes together.

Ariadne smiles as the bubbles tingle against her tongue and throat. Comfortably surrounded by her friends, happy and giddy, she can almost forget the way Ser Christopher glared at her from across the room.

***

Exhausted, Ariadne drags herself up the stairs to her room. The party’s still going on downstairs, and if past years are any indication, it will continue on through dawn. But she’s had a long week, and most of her friends had either already retired to their own rooms, or had been drawn away to other conversations, and she found herself quickly losing the energy to stay upright.

She nods at templars as she passes them, greeting them by name. Edward rotates them each holiday so they all get a chance at the revelry and fun, but the dragon was exceptional this year, as was the food and wine. She offers them apologetic smiles that they got stuck at their posts instead of being allowed at the party. 

“Ser Christopher,” she says, keeping her voice even and flat when she sees him standing against the wall opposite her door. He must have been assigned the later shift. Truthfully, she’d prefer another templar on duty outside this hallway. But it’s too late to ask Edward now and besides - there’s not much she could say as explanation that wouldn’t sound ridiculous. Mages of all genders reside on this floor, so templars of any gender are assigned guard duty.

She fumbles with the door knob, and regrets that last glass of champagne that Margaret insisted on. Though she’s bone-tired, she knows she should drink several glasses of water before finally allowing herself to sleep, else she’ll have a monster of a headache in the morning.

The clink of armor behind her gives her pause. She turns, her hand on the knob, and finds Christopher much closer than she’d like, close enough she can almost feel his breath on her skin. “Can I help you?” she asks, hoping her innocent question disguises the twitch of her fingers behind her as she pulls magic toward her.

“I was hoping you’d reconsider what you said in the storage room.” He leans over her, leaving puffs of hot air against her neck.

“No,” she says, twisting the doorknob with one hand as she collects magic with the other, just in case she needs it. Maybe she can slip in, slam the door behind her and wedge the chair in under the knob. The chair isn't sturdy - the doorknob even less so - but she hopes he wouldn’t risk the noise he’d make trying to break it. “I really should go to bed.”

Suddenly, the tingling ball of magic in her hand disappears. Her eyes widen and she reaches out to the Fade again, only to find it not there. Nothing’s there. No magic, no Fade, nothing. 

Only air.

Her stomach drops. She’s not been without her magic since before it developed. Even when she was refusing to practice, she still felt the slight press of the Fade around her. And now, after seven years, it’s just _gone_. Her head spins a little, like when she was a child and turned around in circles too fast.

Christopher smiles at her, but there’s no warmth behind it.

Ariadne’s breath quickens and her heart starts to pound. Panicking won’t help, and she knows it won’t help, but she can’t avoid it. He’s bigger than her, half a head taller with muscles and strength that come from sword fighting in armor all day long. It occurs to her that Cora’s insistence on hand-to-hand combat training for mages is precisely for circumstances like these, but even if she could get a few hits in - she’s backed up against a door that sticks in the winter, and he’s so much bigger than she is. She’d be overpowered in an instant.

He pushes forward, his armor pressing against her robes. Her robes are soft, no match for the hard metal plates that bite into the skin of her hips. She fights anyway, shoves against him, trying to duck out of his grasp. It’s no use. He pushes harder, and the door gives and they stumble inside.

She’s quick, but he’s quicker, and he thrusts her up against the door as it shuts silently behind them. Ariadne struggles, throwing elbows and knees, trying to land a hit that could give her enough space to escape. Her blows glance off his armor. Christopher grabs her wrists with one large hand and pins them over her head against the door.

She gasps in pain, his grip tight and bruising.

“Quiet,” he hisses, covering her mouth with his gauntlet-covered hand.

She wriggles against him, still fighting though she doesn’t have use of her arms anymore. With one knee, he pins her to the door. She gives herself over to panic, flailing aimlessly with her mind toward the Fade, finding and connecting with nothing. Desperately, she searches for any hint of magic around the room, even a small spark stored in a book or candle.

But she finds nothing. Only cold air and silence. 

Christopher pulls his hand away and presses his mouth to hers in a bruising kiss. She bites his lip, drawing blood.

 _Blood, yes_. She’d read about blood magic - not enough to learn anything other than that she should avoid it, but enough to know that it’s possible. Desperately, she focuses on his blood smeared on her lips, tries to find the deep, strong ball of magic that should lie there. Again, she finds nothing - not even a low thrum or a vibration, nothing she can tug into a spell or that can power a glyph. She knew that templars could block magic, but she never expected it to be used on her and she’s totally unprepared for how _empty_ it feels. He flings her away from the door, angrily tossing her on the bed.

She fights him, kicking and squirming until he presses his knees on either side of her waist and drives his hips into hers. 

Suddenly keenly, _coldly_ aware of what he plans to do, Ariadne stills. 

Christopher grins. He keeps one hand around her wrists as he tugs the gauntlet from his free hand off with his teeth. He shoves her robes up around her hips, fingers pressing into her thighs. “I wish you had reconsidered,” he growls in her ear, roughly thrusting his fingers past her smallclothes.

Ariadne cries out in pain, but his lips again forcibly press against hers, silencing her cries as he pushes his calloused fingers inside of her. The copper taste of blood fills her mouth, and she gags.

Darkness swims at the edges of her vision as he starts to unbuckle his armor. Safe, quiet darkness, away from here, away from him. Her vision blurs and he rips away her smallclothes. Wetness spills over onto her cheeks.

His fingers dig deep into the muscle of her thighs, forcing her legs apart.

He didn’t listen when she asked him to leave, and he didn’t listen when she fought, but maybe if she begs, he’ll finally listen and stop. “Please stop,” she pleads as the darkness encroaches closer and narrows her world to just Christopher’s face above her.

He doesn't even look at her, just presses his hand over her mouth again to silence her. With his other hand, he lifts her hips up at an angle to meet his, and she gives in to the darkness.

***

When she comes back to herself, Ariadne is alone, the winter moon is high in the night sky, and the fire has long gone out. 

She shivers and pushes her robes down back around her legs. Three deep breaths - _breathe in, breathe out_ \- and she tries for her magic.

The Fade responds this time, but it’s shaky and unsteady. She touches the cloudy, silver aura. Her power flares unexpectedly and sends sharp shockwaves up her arm. She shakes out her fingers and stares at them. Her magic is back, but volatile. If she uses it to light the fire, she might set the whole room ablaze. Slowly, carefully, she stands up to find matches instead. 

Something thick and cold, almost sticky, drips between her aching thighs. A moment passes, and she barely makes it to the window before she throws up.

Her throat and eyes burn as she coughs, vomiting up acrid bile as the the night rushes back to her. At least it’s snowing, and it will cover up her vomit on the stones below when guests leave in the morning. After a few dry heaves pass, and though the nausea still roils through her, she’s certain her stomach is empty. Gingerly, she walks across her small room to the dresser and the pitcher of water. She pours a glass and rinses her mouth out, spitting the water out the window. 

Her robes stick to her, tangle around her legs, and she frantically pulls them over her head. She’d loved the deep red this morning, and the gold stitching around the edges, but tonight the red’s a traitor - her robes slid up over her thighs all too easily under his rough hands. She stumbles and slams her knee into her nightstand, half-in and half-out of the robes. She claws at the fabric, tugging and yanking until she manages to tear the closure enough to shove her robes off of her.

She balls up the fabric and angrily throws it away from her into the cold, dark fireplace. Out of the corner of her eye, she finds her smallclothes, ripped and cast aside on the floor. She throws them in the fireplace, too.

Desperately, she digs through her desk drawer in the darkness to search for matches she’s never had to use. The cold winter air blows in from over the sea into her room, across her shoulders and the sickly sweat on her skin. She finally finds the matches in a bundle at the very back of the drawer.

Her fingers shake as she strikes one match against the stone. The head breaks off and falls, useless, to the floor. Her teeth start to chatter and she tries another, but it’s too dry and burns too quickly and she has to drop it, lest she scorch her fingers. Her whole body shivers as she tries the third. Tears start to fill her eyes as the third match breaks as easily as the first.

Ariadne presses her palms to her eyes hard enough that she sees lights bloom behind her eyelids. “Focus,” she whispers.

_Breathe in, breathe out._

The patterns and explosions of light, usually in such brilliant colors but tonight only silver and white, grow brighter as she pushes harder. Brighter and brighter and brighter, until she feels an unearthly calm settle over her.

She pulls her palms away and tries one more match. The match head flares and then settles, burning even and slow. She touches the flame to her robes in three places, making sure they’ll burn, and then shakes out the match. There’s enough wood left in the fireplace that it should catch again. She pushes on the Fade once more, and feels the same unsafe power spike. She decides to try tries the spell anyway: she doesn’t need to create fire, only to keep what’s there burning slower and smokeless.

It takes her three tries with her shivering hands, but she manages to trace the proper glyph on stones on either side of the fireplace. The glyphs pulse a bright orange and then dim. Her spell will hold.

Standing only in her breastband beside the fire, her teeth chatter even harder. Her fingers were numb drawing against the stones, but she isn’t done yet.

Grimacing, she dips her washcloth in the basin of frigid water and cleans between her legs. The cloth passes over small bruises pressed into her inner thighs, and a choked sob escapes her lips. She stumbles and barely catches herself in time before she falls headfirst into the dresser. She drags the cloth harder than she strictly needs to over the sore, abused skin, but she wants every piece of him gone.

She'll need to find a potion in the morning, and make sure nothing of him took hold inside of her. She tosses the cloth into the fire alongside her robes. The fire hisses and sparks, and the cloth smothers part of a log, but it will dry out and catch fire again, and burn along with the rest.

With aching and shivering muscles, she turns the crank to close her window for the first time since she moved into this room. She doesn’t feel any warmer for it, but the fire’s heat has a better chance of helping her now than it did with the wind blowing in. She stares at the bed, and its covers wrinkled in chaotic disarray.

She doesn’t want to sleep there, not after what happened, but her other option is the floor, with only a rug between her and the stones. Her bed is at least soft, and though the warmth of the fire is stronger on the floor and tempting, she’s too badly bruised and hurting to sleep on hard stone. 

Hot tears make their way down her cheeks - tears she can’t control, can’t stop - and her vision blurs as she opens the bottom drawer of her dresser and pulls out the light green quilt.

It won’t do much against the cold, but it’s soft and it's from Lily. Untarnished.

Ariadne curls up in her bed underneath the quilt, tugging the blanket around her shoulders. Its soft lining soothes her oversensitive skin. She clutches the sunburst necklace around her throat, and presses the sharp points of the sunburst into the pad of her thumb.

_Maker, though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure. What you have created, no one can tear asunder._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up: this particular plot continues for the next few chapters (though I promise, it does end).


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and hope has fled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual, thanks to thievinghippo and bloomingcnidarians for lovely beta and cheerleading work. 
> 
> And thanks to everyone, really, for putting up with the disaster my brain turns into when dealing with this particular plot.

Ariadne wakes up the next morning curled into a ball, her knees nearly at her chest. She shivers underneath the blanket.

As much as everything hurt last night, this morning she _aches_. Her hips, shoulders, knees, wrists, head, all throb with a pervasive soreness that threads its way through her whole body. She grimaces and stretches out her legs, loosening the cramps that have formed in her joints from spending the night curled so tightly in on herself. Her elbows protest as she stretches her arms in the same way and she stills when she turns her hands over and sees her wrists.

_Breathe in, breathe out._

Deep purple bruising, patterned just like a templar’s gauntleted hand, encircles the delicate pale skin of her wrists.

She doesn't doubt she has matching bruises on the inside of each thigh.

_Tell Cora._

She traces the outlines of the mark on her left wrist. Gently clasping her left hand with her right, she guides her wrist in a series of small circles. She grits her teeth in pain - the bruises go deep - but repeats the rotation with her right wrist. Fighting with a spirit blade is out of the question, and she doubts she could cast even the most basic spells with her staff. 

_Tell Cora._

Sitting up without putting any weight on her wrists is awkward, and she scoots and shoves her way up. Her room’s warmer than it was when she fell asleep, though it’s still chilly and the fire’s almost out. She presses against the Fade and finds it more solid this time, more reliable. She exhales in relief. At least her magic is stable. With a small wave of her fingers at the fireplace, the fire blooms back into life. 

Her robes and the cloth are little more than ash dusted over the logs. Ariadne draws her knees to her chest and stares into the fire. Someone will ask about her robes. Though there are months before the next holiday when she’s expected to wear them, someone will ask about her robes.

_Tell Cora._

She grits her teeth and swings her legs out of bed. Even through the rug, the floor is cold against her bare feet.

The potions she needs are downstairs in the infirmary; Ruth and Octavia always keep a small stash of pregnancy potions made up and everyone knows that they’re free to take one without question. She might raise a few eyebrows if she’s caught, but with any luck she’ll be able to sneak one of those at the same time she takes a pain draught from the shelf. 

At least in the wake of last night’s celebration, the pain draught won’t be questioned.

_Tell Cora._

She dresses herself, careful not to jostle her bruised body too much. She cinches her belt around the outer robe and pushes up her sleeves to splash water on her face without getting her robes wet. Patting the towel over her face, she pauses - she hangs the towel up and shakes the sleeves down again, hiding her wrists. 

Cora will listen, but she first has to make it to Cora’s office without question. She rummages through her top dresser drawer and finds the braided leather thongs she sometimes wears around her wrists. She wraps the supple leather around her left wrist first, loose enough that it doesn't hurt but tight enough to keep it from moving, and slips the beads at one end through the loop at the other, locking it safely in place. 

She steps up to the window and turns her wrist over, examining it by the morning sun. If someone looks closely, they’ll see the edges of the bruises, but only if they’re looking closely and only on the inside. If she’s careful, no one will notice. She wraps the other leather around her right wrist. She’ll make sure she’s careful.

With a deep breath, she kneels beside her bed. She’s prayed every morning that she can remember

Her first prayers of the new year tend to be full of joy and hope - Exaltations or Apotheosis, sometimes Benedictions - but all her usual verses ring hollow and false in her mind.

She grimaces as she struggles to her feet and her knees protest being bent and stretched so much so quickly. She opens the drawer to her nightstand. Safe and sound, her copy of the Chant lies amidst a small pot of lotion, a tin of lip balm, and a stubby candle.

Knowing exactly what verse she wants, Ariadne flips the Chant open to the precise page and kneels again. Her fingertips ghost across the words she wrote so many years ago, the words she has memorized. She takes a deep breath, drawing strength from the words on the page.

_Those who oppose thee shall know the wrath of Heaven._

_Field and forest shall burn, the seas shall rise and devour them, the wind shall tear their nations from the face of the earth, lightning shall rain down from the sky._

If her conversation with Cora lifts some of the weight and pain, she promises the Maker she’ll pray again before bed and choose something more appropriate to a new year. Something less vengeful, less angry. But for now, she needs the strength from her anger. It’s all she has this morning.

She places the Chant back in the drawer and turns to leave, to find her potions and breakfast and Cora.

But she pauses at the door and turns. Not quite sure why, she strides back to the bed and drags off the green quilt. She carefully folds it and replaces it in the bottom drawer of her dresser, tenderly smoothing out any wrinkles before she shuts the drawer. She tugs the other blankets into some semblance of order and straightness, and then opens her window. A light winter wind blows in, though the previous night’s snow has stopped. She stands beside the window and lets the cold air sink into her skin. She shivers.

Before she leaves, she looks around her small chamber. Nothing out of place, nothing out of the ordinary. She nods to herself. Better.

Ariadne opens her door, and immediately freezes.

Ser Christopher stands guard in the hall opposite her door.

She takes a shallow breath and squares her shoulders. Casting her eyes downward, she pulls her door shut behind her and steps out into the hall.

Dark emptiness settles around her again, and fear spikes a bitter taste in the back of her throat. She hasn’t even tried to touch the Fade, but she knows it isn’t there. He’s blocking her from it, surrounding her in silence, cutting off any defense she might have against him.

With two strides, he’s across the hall and standing right in front of her. She inhales sharply, shakily. Her teeth start to chatter and she clenches her jaw tight. If she so much as breathes the wrong way, she’ll brush up against him.

“If you’re considering telling anyone,” he growls low in her ear, “don’t.”

Ariadne tenses hard, holding back a shiver. His breath is hot and wet on her skin. She closes her eyes.

_Cora. Tell Cora._

“Tell anyone, and that ache in your cunt will be the least of your problems.” He steps back, away from her. “Now go on down to breakfast,” he says with a cold grin. He settles back into his position against the wall.

Ariadne bites her lip, keeping tears at bay, and tries not to rush down the hall away from him; he’d get too much satisfaction from watching her flee.

***

Ariadne slips the tiny bottle into her palm just as the infirmary door opens. She deftly slides the bottle into the pocket of her robes, and passes her finger over the shelf below, searching for the pain draught she needs.

“Well,” Joanie says, staring at the shelf and its dwindling supply, “I know what I’m doing today.” They exhale and take a potion for themselves and then look beside them at Ariadne. “Are you okay? You look...terrible, honestly.”

Ariadne smiles weakly and holds up the pain draught. “Bit too much to drink last night,” she says. She even manages a small laugh. _Cora_ \- Joanie could help, but she needs to get to Cora.

Joanie nods. “Take that with water. It’s not strictly necessary, but it’ll help with the headache.”

“Thank you,” Ariadne says, and quickly leaves Joanie to contemplate how much elfroot they need to restock the potions.

Once out in the hall, she ducks into an alcove out of sight. She takes the hidden vial from her pocket and holds it up. Dark orange liquid shimmers inside. She tilts it, and the liquid slowly drips down the glass sides. Ariadne makes a face - she _hates_ the thick ones. 

But she needs to take this, so she twists out the stopper and swallows it all in one go.

She nearly gags. Thick and sour, almost like rotten lemon, it clings to her tongue and mouth as the liquid slides down her throat. She swallows a few more times, and follows it with the pain potion, but nothing cuts the taste. 

Breathing carefully, she sets the two empty vials and stoppers in the box Ruth keeps outside the infirmary for used potion bottles, and continues on toward breakfast. Though her stomach turns at the idea, food might help clear her mouth of the horrible taste.

Ariadne enters the Great Hall after a small group of apprentices rush in to make sure they can get bacon. The apprentices and their energy are in the minority; most everyone in the Hall is slow, sluggish, nursing headaches and hangovers like every First Day. 

Cora’s standing beside a table two aisles down, talking to Arif and Octavia. Relief floods through Ariadne, only to be stopped frozen cold again when she sees Christopher a few tables over, eating with Ferdinand and Marcus. 

He must have walked downstairs while she was in the infirmary. 

He looks up and catches her eye.

For all she tried to avoid his gaze in the hallway outside her room, she can’t break eye contact with him now.

_Tell Cora. Tell Cora. Tell Cora._

Christopher shakes his head, a subtle motion missed by his breakfast companions, but with a meaning that sends Ariadne’s heart pounding.

_That ache in your cunt will be the least of your problems._

She sits next to a very-hungover Margaret and takes a piece of toast from the platter in the middle of the table. The resolve she had only minutes ago dissolves as fear creeps up her spine and takes control. She should stand up and tell Cora - he can’t do anything to her here, not with so many people, not with _Cora_ watching - and she _wants_ to stand up and tell Cora, but fear roots her to the bench. 

Christopher tilts his head at her, a sneer on his lips.

What little appetite she had disappears, but she makes herself drink a glass of apple juice and nibble at her toast.

***

Luckily, undoing the charm on all the glasses didn’t have to be done one glass at a time, but it still took her all day. She was happy to stay alone in the storage room. Listening to the Tranquil hum the Chant in the the next room as they cleaned the dishes, watching as Margaret and Mari fought over how best to top themselves next year while they made sure dispel all their magic from the dragon so it could be stored safely, she’d worked in silence. None of it had provided the distraction she needed, and no amount of reciting the Chant in her head could block out the vivid and painful memories of the night before.

But she’d felt comfortable, almost safe. Christopher wasn’t around; Liselle and Sophia were supervising the work in the storage area, and had spent the day playing Wicked Grace. Lunch had passed in the company of friends, and so had dinner.

Ariadne trudges up the stairs alone, walking as slowly as she can to her room. Her breath catches in her throat as she reaches the top of the stairs. Last night, she’d climbed these stairs happy, only to walk ten more steps and turn a corner and find him waiting for her right outside her door, the first one at the top of the stairs. She wants to stop, turn around, and run back down the stairs, across the main floor and up the other set of stairs. Wants to find Cora, Margaret, Emelie, Joanie, _anyone_ , and tell them.

The comfort and calm of the day hadn’t done anything to unseat the knot of fear in her stomach, only to keep temporarily at bay. But now, fear floods through her veins. Fear, fear that makes no sense to her at all but deep, cold, _frigid_ fear that she can’t fight against keeps her walking toward her room instead of back down the stairs. 

She remembers when she was younger, lost while a fear demon hunted her through a snowy, empty forest. She’d managed to stand her ground then, but there isn’t any white spark in the darkness now. She’s alone in the hallway.

Ariadne shudders and turns the corner.

Tears spring to her eyes. 

He’s standing outside her room again, guard duty. And she’s stupidly taken too long getting to her room, it’s only minutes before they’re all supposed to be in their rooms for the night. She doubts any mage on her floor is still outside their room.

Silence descends upon her again, but she tries to reach for her magic anyway. It’s a worthless endeavor. 

They’re alone in the hallway and he’s shoved her up against the door before she can even think about screaming. Her nose fills with pine and she nearly gags. One hand pressing against her mouth, he fumbles with the door knob with the other. Twisting the knob, he pushes them both inside.

“No,” she whispers through her tears. Her voice sounds so very weak. “Please don’t.”

“Shut up,” he growls, pulling her robes apart. He roughly grabs her breasts.

Ariadne whimpers in pain. “Stop, _please_.”

He thrusts one knee between her legs. “I said shut _up_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so. We're in this plot for a few chapters - take care of yourselves, friends. Feel free to send me a message on Tumblr (dearophelia) if you want/need to know when this particular plot comes to an end.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wintersend, a test, and a discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again, to thievinghippo for being a totally rad beta, and bloomingcnidarians for being a super groovy cheerleader

Ariadne wakes up stiff and sore, like she has nearly every day for the past month. She exhales and sits up. The low ache in her wrists has become so common she barely notices it outside of training; on a day when the bruises had faded enough, she went to the infirmary to ask Ruth for a pair of braces to use during practice, and now it’s only particularly-hard hits that she notices.

She slides out of bed and goes about her morning.

She’s learned to make the potion for herself now; the hardest part is sneaking the blightcap deep mushroom, amrita vein, dark embrium, and dried deathroot out of the infirmary. She counts three bottles remaining in her desk drawer; she’ll need to make more before the week’s out. The recipe had said once a week was enough to prevent a child, but she’s unwilling to take the risk, not with _him_ ; a small part of her shouts some mornings, warns of even the tiny bit of deathroot taken sometimes two or three (or four, once) days in a row, but it isn’t loud enough to drown out the fear and disgust and pure _panic_ at the idea of anything belonging to him remaining inside of her. 

She rinses out the empty bottle once she drinks its contents. The potion still tastes terrible, but much like the pain in her wrists - she doesn’t notice it much anymore. She places the bottle back beside the others, carefully spaced so it won’t rattle. Quiet is important, when she can get it.

Commotion from below her window draws her attention and she peers out. Guests for the Wintersend gala have been arriving all week. Enchanter Vivienne slides gracefully off her horse, and a small smile tugs at Ariadne’s lips. She’s not seen the woman in four years, but Vivienne is a spot of delight she’s been looking forward to since she saw the guest list. 

But first, she attends to her bed. The green quilt goes back in the drawer, and she tugs the rest of the covers up and smoothes them out. Though she hadn’t needed much more than a light blanket before, she’s always freezing when she comes back to herself after he leaves. The quilt is safe, with its bright fabric and cheery flowers, and soft on her skin when she curls underneath the other blankets for warmth.

Wintersend’s colors are blue and silver, and her destroyed red robes thankfully won’t be missed at the gala tomorrow night. She dons her regular dark purple robes, and kneels for prayer.

_Though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide. I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond. For there is no darkness in the Maker’s Light, and nothing He has wrought shall be lost._

Ariadne pauses, and wonders if she’ll ever be able to pray using a canticle other than Trials ever again. She clasps her hands tighter. One day, maybe, Trials won’t be necessary. It wasn’t always necessary - Trials helped her through the last two years at the orphanage, and then she didn’t need it anymore.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

_I am not alone. Even as I stumble on the path with my eyes closed yet I see the Light is here._

***

The frostberry wine is sharp this year, just on the crisp side of cloyingly sweet. Ariadne’s never been too fond of the wine’s sweetness, and takes only a few sips before she sets her glass down on a tray. Though she knows he can’t be far away, she’s not seen Christopher since the magical flowers bloomed over the Great Hall’s arched windows at sunset. She tries to relax and focus on the party, and not what might come after. 

“How is your training, my dear?”

Ariadne looks beside her at Vivienne. She’s not had a chance to speak to Vivienne yet this evening, and she smiles, happy that the other woman sought her out. Vivienne looks as elegant as she remembers, her shimmering silver robes are striking against her dark skin, and the subtle sparkles woven throughout the draped fabric glitter in the torchlight. “It’s going well,” she says truthfully. “I’ve learned to use the Fade as a cloak. I wish I’d known that one as a child, it would have made Hide And Seek much easier.” That she had never played Hide And Seek with the other orphans seems secondary to learning a spell that turns her invisible.

Vivienne smiles and holds her glass up, examining the dark reddish-purple liquid before she finishes her wine. “That one is one of my favorites,” she admits.

“I still can’t beat Cora during a sparring match,” she admits. It has not been for lack of trying, though at least she now doesn’t need to rely on her other magic quite so much to hold her own. She gets a few hits in, but Cora always wins the fight.

At that, Vivienne laughs, a warm, genuine sound that rolls infectiously over Ariadne. Ariadne finds herself grinning as Vivienne’s laughter wraps around her like silk. Her mouth feels strange, pulled into a smile; it seems forever since she smiled and truly meant it.

“The day you win a match against Cora is the day Andraste herself rises from the dead, darling. I know no one who has bested her.”

Ariadne’s smile widens, feeling a bit better for her failures. If even Vivienne - who she remembers as quick, strong and aggressive during the practice she watched - hasn’t beat Cora, perhaps she isn’t doing as poorly as she thought. The musicians start up another song, and the dancers shift partners. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

Vivienne nods. “All things are. Excuse me, my dear, there is a duke whose attention I require for a moment. I will try to find you before I leave in the morning. I should like to say goodbye.”

“Of course. It was lovely speaking with you again.”

Vivienne slips away to find her duke, and Margaret passes by. But she stops, and takes two steps back to stand in front of Ariadne.

“Did you eat today?” she asks. “You’re paler than normal.”

“Yes,” Ariadne says. Margaret’s eyes narrow, and travel to Ariadne’s waist. “You were with me at dinner,” she says, but it comes out a little harsher than she intended. 

Margaret raises her hand in surrender and walks away, chasing after a Tranquil carrying a tray of full wine glasses.

She had eaten, though barely, and only enough to keep her head from spinning. The same potion that flushes any potential child from her womb also removes her appetite. She’s been trying to remember to eat, if only so her head and body don't betray her during training. She’s already had to pull the belt around her robes a notch tighter, and is nearing on a second. But between the potion, and the way her stomach turns every time she sees him - and sometimes empties itself once he leaves - anything much more substantial than bread and the occasional orange or bowl of soup has been difficult to swallow and keep down. 

She pushes those thoughts aside and scans the crowd. Her eyes meet Cora’s, and Cora waves her fingers around the stem of her wine glass. It’s a small movement, one Ariadne probably wouldn’t even notice if she hadn’t been sparring with Cora for the past several months; Cora uses the same motion, though grasped around a sword instead, when Ariadne isn’t attacking aggressively enough. Given the celebration, she rather doubts Cora wants her to conjure her spirit blade and charge across the Hall, but instead wants Ariadne to join her.

The crowd is thick, pressed into the edges of the Hall around the dance floor, but she’s taller than most of the guests, and towers over a few, and most of them move out of her way; she only steps on a few toes on her way through. With a smile and an apology, she interrupts the man speaking to Cora and begs a moment alone with her First Enchanter.

“Thank you,” Cora hisses, once he’s left. “He’s the Teyrn’s son, I really ought to make nice with him but, _Maker_ , is he dull. As if supply ledgers and grain stores are something I concern myself with on a daily basis.” She reaches for another glass of wine, carried on a tray by Lucy passing by, only to be blocked by Ariadne. “Ari.”

“Cora.” She lifts an eyebrow. To anyone who didn’t know her, Cora wouldn’t look anything other than an elegant, commanding woman, fully sober. But there’s a barely-perceptible slouch to Cora’s shoulders that gives her away: she’s had more than a few glasses of wine. Normally Ariadne wouldn’t interfere - normally Cora doesn’t drink this much - but Edward’s away on business at the White Spire. What she knows of the politics Cora navigates so effortlessly could fill a thimble with room left over, but she does know that it’s for the better if Blackrock Tower’s leadership _isn’t_ visibly drunk. It probably isn’t her place to interfere, but while Cora looks fine now, the extra glass may tip her over the edge.

Cora defiantly holds her gaze for a moment, and then gives in with a sigh. She looks around, making sure no one’s listening. “I have to tell you something,” she says, suddenly looking not in the least like the stoic matriarch Ariadne’s come to know, but much like a young girl with a secret.

Ariadne slips her arm around Cora’s waist in pretense of companionship, but really to support her should she have had more wine than either of them suspect, and guides Cora out of the Hall. There might be a few raised eyebrows in the morning that she didn’t properly say goodbye to certain guests, but Ariadne isn’t sure who those certain guests would be to maneuver their path past them. Besides, Cora seems to have given herself permission to succumb to the wine’s effects with Ariadne’s arm around her.

“Lift your feet,” Ariadne advises, “up the stairs.”

Cora stops on the landing halfway up the stairs, well out of earshot of any party guests or guarding templars. “Vivienne and I were in love once,” she says suddenly, peering out the window up at the night sky. “At Wycome.” She sounds a little distant, lost in the memory.

Ariadne blinks. She hadn’t known what to expect when Cora admitted something to tell - she’d honestly assumed Cora would forget by the time they were out of the party - but _that_ certainly wasn’t it. “Oh.” She doesn’t know what else to say.

They continue up the stairs and down the hall in silence, leaving Cora’s confession to hang in the air behind them.

“I ended things with Vivienne because of Edward, and she was...distraught would be an understatement, I’m afraid.” Cora turns the handle on her chamber door and, making a face at the stubborn wood, shoves it open with her hip. “Salt air,” she explains, “the door never likes the spring.”

With a subtle wave of her hand, Ariadne lights the room’s candles before Cora can. Though she doesn’t doubt Cora could be falling down drunk and still have complete control over her magic, she doesn’t want to test that theory.

Cora sighs. “Vivienne left Wycome shortly after, in the middle of the night. It was years before we could talk pleasantly. I don’t blame her, my timing was awful.” She stops beside the dresser and takes off her earrings and necklace. “These gatherings are always a little difficult when we’re both in attendance, and the wine helps.” She turns to Ariadne. “Thank you for assisting me back to my room. And I would appreciate your discretion on -”

“Of course,” Ariadne promises. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Sleep well, Ari.”

It’s only when she’s all the way down the stairs that Ariadne feels like she missed her chance. But she’s in view of two templars now, and she isn’t supposed to be away from the party, and Cora’s probably out cold anyway. She takes a breath and walks forward.

***

She expects him. Luck would be too much on her side for him not to have seen her leave the Hall with Cora, or for him not to be waiting for her, angry at what she might have said.

But she doesn’t expect him to be already in her room, and when she doesn’t see him standing outside, she allows herself to relax - just a little. Maybe she was wrong. _Maker, just this once, let me be wrong._

As soon as the door closes behind her, he moves from the shadows to pin her arms behind her back. She nearly shrieks, both in surprise and pain. Almost too late, she remembers to be quiet - he’s harder, _meaner_ when she makes any noise at all. She swallows the shriek.

“I told you not to tell anyone,” he hisses.

“I didn’t,” she says.

He twists her wrists in a way that makes her fingertips go numb. “You’d better be telling the truth.”

Red-hot fury rolls through her. She should have told Cora - she should have told Cora a month ago - but she didn’t, and he has the audacity not to believe her. She pitches herself backwards against him, hard enough to knock him off balance so she can wrench herself free. “You bastard,” she spits, “do you really think that if I’d told my First Enchanter what you’ve been doing to me the past month that you’d be standing here right now?”

He slaps her hard enough that her cheek goes numb and spots swim across her vision. “No one will ever believe you. Not now.” He reaches out and shoves her to her knees.

Pain shoots up her legs as her knees slam into the stone floor.

***

She wakes the next morning to twin ugly bruises on her knees, and blood on her sheets. Walking even the short length of her room for clean clothes and glass of water hurts so badly that tears spring to her eyes. She spends the day in her room, curled up in bed, clutching her Chant. When Joanie knocks to check on her, concerned that she wasn’t at breakfast, she feigns a migraine; she doesn’t need to feign gratitude when Joanie later brings two vials of pain draught and a healing potion and leaves them on her nightstand.

Too terrified to sleep, worried that he’ll come - and come even angrier now that he’s had a day to stew about her outburst - but unable to do a thing about it, she stays awake through the night. She reads Andraste and Trials over and over by candlelight, and strains to hear every little noise from the hall.

The sun rises, and she’s been left alone.

When he returns a week later, the longest he’s gone, she still fights him, still struggles and pushes. But she’s silent.

***

One more spell, one more spell and the exam is over. One more spell, and she’ll be an enchanter.

Two hours of spell work leaves her exhausted and drained under normal circumstances. But she’s performing in front of Cora, Michael, Arif, and Ruth - and they’ve all watched her with blank expressions, giving her no indication of how she’s done so far. Deep inside of her, she knows she’s done well - she hasn’t practiced hours a day for a year and a half now to not know when she’s done her spells properly - but their unchanging faces are unsettling as she comes up on her final spell.

She sailed through Primal, Creation, and Spirit spells, demonstrating her skill with three of the four pillars. Entropy has always been a problem for her: she prefers order over chaos, creation over destruction. It’s a risk hanging her success on only one spell from Entropy that she’s left for last, but she adjusts her grip on her staff, takes another breath - _breathe in, breathe out_ \- and prepares for the paralyzing spell.

“I need a volunteer, please,” she says, voice strong despite her exhaustion. What she’d like to do is turn around and hurl her spell at Christopher standing at the door behind her - three weeks passed before her knees finally stopped hurting - but that will only make things worse for her.

Sophia steps forward from her spot opposite Christopher. She unbuckles her sword and sets it on the floor.

“Keep walking toward me,” Ariadne directs the templar. She’s nearly drained, but a cold breeze blows through her hair, a breeze that doesn’t so much as flutter a single strand of hair. The Fade around her takes the form of a snowy forest, but not the stark empty woods of her Harrowing; the sun shines warm and bright through the trees, sparkling on the snow. She opens her palms downward toward the ground and snow begins to rise, twisting and shifting into thin, glowing threads of magic. She brings her hands together in front of her, palms facing upward, and wills the threads to weave and knot themselves into a net. Stretched out, the net forms the spell glyph she needs.

Envisioning the result - Sophia standing perfectly still, unable to move so much as an eyelid - Ariadne closes her eyes to center herself. When Sophia’s armor clanks just three steps away, Ariadne flings the spell outward.

She opens her eyes. She smiles in satisfaction, and pride. 

Sophia’s frozen, mid-step. 

Ariadne leaves her there for five seconds, long enough to prove that her spell is strong enough. With a twist of her hand, she releases the net and sets Sophia free.

The four senior mages seated at the dais share looks with each other and subtle nods, and then Cora stands. “Congratulations, Ariadne,” she says. 

Ariadne steps forward and shakes the hands of all four, forcing her smile not to waver as she feels Christopher’s eyes boring into her back. She passed despite him, despite everything he’s done, despite him standing there the whole time. She may not have been able to demonstrate it on him, but she chose the paralyzing spell for a reason once she learned he’d be at her exam. He’ll always block her magic, but he knows now she could easily stop him if he didn’t.

She leaves the room feeling stronger, better than she has since First Day. He still comes to her room that night, and she’s still powerless to stop him. But she grits her teeth, confident in the fact that if it weren’t for the curtain of silence he always hangs between her and the Fade, she’d have him hanging upside down from the ceiling in a heartbeat.

***

“Ariadne,” Lucy says from the corner. “There is a chest here. It is labeled Starkhaven Records, 8:90 - 8:99 Blessed.”

Though she doubts anything from Starkhaven at the end of the Blessed Age is anything that will help Cora, Ariadne rises from her hard chair and joins the Tranquil in the corner. “Why are Starkhaven records here?” she asks, mostly to herself.

“Often Circle archivists will send copies of records to other Circles to ensure a copy will always remain in spite of flood or fire, or war,” Lucy answers.

Ariadne frowns, and tries to flip the rusty latch. After thirty years inside a room in the seaside tower’s basement, it’s not surprising the latch sticks. At least this isn’t the side of the lower level that floods in spring. She tries again, but the latch stays stubbornly in place; she considers how to magically blast it off without destroying the chest or its contents, but Lucy whispers for her to wait and leaves the room. She returns several minutes later with a small vial of oil, which she carefully pours over the latch; when Ariadne reaches for it, Lucy shakes her head and holds up a finger.

“Give it a moment,” she says.

When Lucy nods a minute later, Ariadne tries the latch again. With a little bit of force, it slides open. She lifts the lid, revealing a disorganized pile of loose papers inside. She conjures a small light to hang in the air beside her, and sits next to the chest to begin reading. None of the chairs in this room are comfortable, let alone stable. She dismisses Lucy - though Cora trusts Lucy, and therefore so does she - this is a one person job.

Half an hour of just skimming dates and names passes before she realizes what she’s reading: formal reports of complaints against templars. The chest is full of them; most reports are only one page, but some are two or three, even five pages long, bound together with twine. 

Her breath catches in her throat as she scans the page in front of her. Her eyes glaze over the words, it’s all too much for her to believe, but certain phrases stand out: _came to my room, forced me to have sex with him, I didn’t want him to. Hurt._ She swallows sharply and wipes at her eyes and flips to the last page, where Starkhaven’s Knight Commander wrote down his decision. Charges unsubstantiated, his ugly handwriting reads, no action needed.

She scrambles up onto her knees and digs through the chest, separating the reports into piles, Cora’s quest forgotten for now. When the chest is empty, she turns to her piles. With a heavy heart, she takes the pile of women like her - not the largest pile, but not the smallest either - and begins to read them all, every word.

Not a single templar held accountable, not a single templar so much as reprimanded over ten years. Eight of the mages were made Tranquil within a year. Another four were found dead under _unknown circumstances_ , which Ariadne wouldn’t hesitate to interpret as _by their own hands_ , given their respective reports. 

“This was Starkhaven, not Ostwick,” she whispers to herself. 

But still - twenty-five reports of abuse like hers in one Circle, over a decade. Fifteen templars, all of which walked free. Eight women turned Tranquil for daring to fight back. Four killed themselves to make it stop. How many others didn’t say a word?

_Tell Cora._

She wonders if Cora could even do anything. She wonders if Edward _would_.

***

Talking to Cora in her office would be easier, but she’s learned from Wintersend that talking to Cora in private has consequences, and so catches her in the Great Hall during breakfast instead.

“I’m having trouble finding anything in our libraries,” Ariadne starts. She looks around her in the crowded Hall, filled with people who can’t know what she’s looking for. “I’ve only found the same three verses of Maferath over and over again.” She hopes Cora catches her hidden meaning. “Is there any chance I could go to Val Royeaux and look in the Archives? If there’s _anything_ , it’s there.” 

And if she’s in Val Royeaux, he can’t get to her, can’t be in her room waiting for her, can’t _hurt_ her.

Cora nods, immediately understanding. “I’ll see if I can arrange it.”

Ariadne opens her mouth to thank Cora, but a whiff of pine catches her off guard and she has to swallow against the wave of nausea. Christopher walks past, and though he doesn’t look at her, she feels his anger and warning radiating off of him, cold and icy. “Thank you,” she says, recovering quickly.

“Are you alright, Ari?”

Not quick enough, then. “Yes, sorry.” She plasters on a smile. “I’m late for lessons, that’s all.”

Cora narrows her eyes, but doesn’t question further. “I’ll arrange the trip.”

Ariadne gives her one final smile, a smile she doesn’t feel at all, before leaving the Great Hall for the classroom downstairs. She hurries through the halls and the staircase; she isn’t actually late, but Callie and Miranda tend to arrive early to practice. She’s only been working with them for three weeks, but already she feels a sense of responsibility toward her apprentices. Though someone else would undoubtedly take over for her if necessary, the four young apprentices depend on her, count on her. They’re a reason for her to get out of bed in the morning.

Christopher passes her in the hall outside the classroom, on his way to his own duties for the day, and Ariadne suppresses a shiver. 

She pauses outside the classroom to take a breath, and smooth her palms over her blue enchanter’s robes. Centered and calm, with Christopher as far from her mind as she can push him, she steps into the classroom where Callie and Miranda are already trying small fire spells. Pine lingers in her nose, but she manages a genuine smile for the two girls.

_If his gaze is on me, then they are safe._

“Jacob’s on his way,” Maxim says as he rushes in behind her, his mouth half-stuffed with a roll. He chews the rest of his breakfast and swallows. “He’s trying to convince a Tranquil -”

“They have names,” Callie interrupts.

“- to let him take breakfast out of the Hall.”

Ariadne clears her throat. “If you two would come down to breakfast in a timely fashion, you would neither need to fight with anyone over food, nor would you be quite so consistently late for my lessons.” She grins. “We’ll give him five minutes, and then start with what we worked on yesterday.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A spot of brightness (no warnings)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thievinghippo and bloomingcnidarians are terrific people, without whom this story would hardly be readable

The rain’s finally let up, and the sun’s been shining for two days, drying out the mud in the practice field. Ariadne closes her eyes and tilts her head up toward the sky and the warm spring sun. She hasn’t been warm in months, and still isn’t - not all the way, not deep inside. But at least her skin is warm. She takes a deep breath, and returns her gaze to the four apprentices standing - slouching, really - in a very uneven line in front of her. 

They’re young, but old enough to know how to form a proper line. She lifts one eyebrow at them and draws her right index finger through the air, silently gesturing for them to straighten the line. Though Maxim rolls his eyes, all four of them shift, shuffling half-steps forward or back to be in line with each other. She raises her eyebrow higher and they all stand up straight.

“Better,” she says. “Now, before we begin. A few questions about the reading I asked you to do. Maxim, put your hand down, I know you didn’t do any of the reading.”

“How do _you_ know?”

“Because I’ve been in the library the past two days doing my own research, and didn’t see you once,” she says. He’s good - the best of the four of them by far - but she wishes he’d listen to her lessons a little more, and make up thoroughly false answers a little less; his fake answers sound convincing enough that the others tend to believe him. “And what I asked you to read is in a book you’re not supposed to take out of the library. Callie,” she smiles at the tall gangly girl trying very hard not to look too excited as she raises her hand, “maybe you can explain to Maxim why it’s important to understand Madame Collette’s Four Fundamentals Of Fire?”

While Callie recites the Four Fundamentals word for word, Ariadne squints across the field in the bright sunlight. Everyone’s outside today, small groups and individuals alike; some practicing like they are, others sitting under trees - or even in the direct sun - and studying.

There’s no sign of him anywhere. Edward must have him inside today. Ariadne lets her shoulders relax as much as she can, which isn’t much at all, and returns her focus to Callie. The girl finishes explaining the importance of the fourth fundamental and smirks proudly at Maxim.

“Well done,” she praises. Callie’s smile is wide, and missing a front tooth, and makes Ariadne’s heart swell. A seagull flies overhead, and she decides to adjust her lesson for the day. “A bit of a change in plan today,” she says. “You’ve all seen spell glyphs, yes?” Once they all nod, she continues. “Can anyone tell me anything about spell glyphs?”

Callie again raises her hand. Jacob tries to avoid eye contact, Maxim just looks bored, and Miranda has her brow furrowed in concentration.

“Callie?”

“Spell glyphs are designed to amplify or contain magical power. By channeling mana from the Fade into a series of repetitive symbols, the wielder can better control their mana, allowing them to either increase the power of the spell without also increasing energy used, or to hold power in place until the spell is ready to be cast.”

Ariadne nods. “Exactly. Next time, I’d like you to try to rephase the book into your own words - it’ll help you understand and apply the material instead of just being able to recite it.” Next to Callie, Maxim snickers. Ariadne turns her attention to him for a moment. “The next time you arrive at lessons either as late or as unprepared as you were today, I will have Cora assign you to breakfast kitchen duty for a month. You’d do well to take even half the initiative Callie has.”

Maxim’s shoulders droop, and a twinge of remorse passes through Ariadne’s stomach. She tries not to chastise her apprentices too harshly - they are not the ones who deserve her wrath for the things that happen to her in her bedroom late at night. But Maxim’s lack of discipline is just one more item on a list of things making her life unbearable, and is one of the very few items on that list she can attempt to control, so she swallows down the apology on her tongue.

“I see you all have your workbooks with you today, good. Come with me,” Ariadne picks up her own notebook from where it sat on the grass by her feet, and leads them away from the practice field and toward the sea and the rocky shore. 

Climbing over the rocks, she feels her muscles waver and slip. She braces her palm on a rough, rugged tree, catching herself before her ankle twists. She’d been awkward and clumsy when she first came to the Circle, but months of combat training and focus had steadied her legs and balance; coordination has taken more energy as of late, and she’s not such a fool as to think it’s unconnected to him, or the potion she takes every morning. But she steps over the crack between two rocks, determined to stay upright, just like the tree clinging to the rocks despite years of wind and surf. 

She looks over her shoulder, making sure that the four apprentices are still following her, and leads them down the rocks to sit on the back steps of the tower. The tide’s out now, revealing crumbling steps covered in seaweed and barnacles - where they once lead and why they were built deep into the ocean, she doubts anyone knows anymore. “Sit,” she says, pointing to steps far above the water line and takes a seat herself on a dry step above the four children.

“There are standard spell glyphs that you’ll use when you first learn the spell.” She taps her middle finger and thumb of her right hand together twice and then rolls her palm outward and open, casting a small flashfire spell onto the rock beside her. With a little extra push of mana, the glyph glows longer, giving them time to study the pattern within it. She doesn’t need the mnemonic anymore, a directed thought and a pointed finger are enough, but it’s good for the apprentices to see that their magic is held within _them_ , and exists even when a staff isn’t available.

Ariadne waves her hand, erasing the spell. “But, as you learn it and grow stronger, you can modify the glyph for yourself. Yes, Callie,” she addresses the girl, hand raised high.

“Does changing the glyph change the spell itself?”

“No,” she shakes her head, “not unless you want it to, but that’s a good question. Changing the glyph to suit your needs means that you can thread mana through it easier. Faster. You can remember it better because it’s yours.” Pinky to thumb this time, three taps, and another bolt of flashfire hits the rock. “This is mine, it’s a little different than the standard. See the triangles on the inside edge, instead of spirals.”

Jacob squints in the sunlight. “It looks like the Chantry sunburst, in the middle.”

“Yes,” Ariadne says. “Most of mine have the sunburst, somewhere. It’s important to me, and helps me direct my magic. Mari’s summoning spells tend to have symbols from her alienage worked into the pattern, and Margaret’s storm spells use elements from her family’s crest.”

“Bet the Chantry doesn’t like their heraldry in magic spells,” Maxim mutters under his breath. 

Ariadne’s saved from having to say anything by Miranda, usually very quiet and still, reaching behind Callie and smacking the back of Maxim’s head with her notebook. Ariadne presses her lips together, and manages to hold back her smile. “What I want you to do today is start to draw patterns that mean something to you. You’ll be using standard spell glyphs when you begin to learn those spells, but I want you to be thinking now of how you might modify them later. And if you can’t think of any pattern or symbol that’s important to you, draw ones that are easy for you, or feel good to draw.”

They open their notebooks and stare at blank pages. Callie scrunches her nose up in concentration, and Jacob immediately begins to draw. Miranda starts and stops her pencil several times, bites on the end of it, and flips to a new page before nodding to herself and starting to draw. Maxim traces designs in the air with his finger, waving his hand across the air as if to erase a line he doesn’t like. Ariadne smiles. She braces her arms behind her and leans backward, opening herself up to the sun.

Waves lap quietly against the rocks and gulls squawk overhead. Pencils scratch against paper, and the sun shines warm in a cloudless sky. A rare sense of peace settles over her. She banishes the thought that it won’t last - of course it won’t, it’ll disappear as soon as the sun starts to set and they walk inside - and tries to relax into the peace.

***

“Ari!” Cora calls after the younger woman as she passes in the hallway. “We’ll finish this in my office,” she says to Octavia, and then catches up to Ariadne where she’s paused beside a window.

Even in the spring sunshine, Ariadne looks drawn; deep hollows beneath her eyes, gaunt cheeks, and ashy skin even paler than usual. She’s been spending a lot of late nights in the library, Cora knows, but when Ariadne turns to face Cora, there’s a shadow crossing her green eyes that speaks of more than just exhaustion and too much research by dim candlelight. Cora’s brow furrows in concern, but she’s asked Ariadne before and received variations of _I’m fine, just tired_. Ariadne does not respond well to pushing, and though Cora feels like each answer is more and more of a brush off, she’s hesitant to push even harder lest she push her away entirely.

“I received word this morning,” Cora tells her, “your trip to Val Royeaux to visit the Archives has been approved. You’ll leave in two days, and Emelie will escort you.”

“How long?”

The twinge of desperation in Ariadne’s voice is almost even more cause for concern than the dark circles under her eyes. Cora’s eyes narrow briefly, as if she can squint hard enough and see what lies beneath the surface. “Two weeks, once you arrive.”

Tension floods out of Ariadne’s shoulders and she visibly relaxes. “Good.”

Ariadne may not respond well to pushing, but sometimes she needs to pushed. Cora thought Ariadne was getting better in Lily’s absence, but perhaps the beginning preparations for Summerday next month have dredged up memories. “Ariadne,” she says quietly, though they’re alone in the hallway, “is there something wrong?”

“I’m fine, Cora.” She looks out the window, distracted by a passing flock of gulls.

It doesn’t escape Cora’s notice that Ariadne once again avoided her question. “But you would tell me if you were not?” She phrases it like a question, though she intends it as a statement.

Ariadne snaps her focus back to Cora. “Of course.” She smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

Cora’s been First Enchanter for over fifteen years, and has well learned when mages are lying to her. But Ariadne’s strung as tight as a lute string, liable to break and close herself off even further if she pushes any harder. Cora nods, schooling her face into her own lie to assure Ariadne that she believes her. “We’ve not officially involved him, but I believe you can trust Brother Tobias to help you. Alexia is with us, though due to her position as Grand Cleric, that’s a very well-kept secret; if Tobias does turn out to be a problem, talk to her.”

“I will. Thank you, Cora. For arranging this.” After a moment, Ariadne looks away and takes a short, sharp breath. 

Cora waits, giving her space and time to continue if she wants. “You’re welcome,” she says, when Ariadne says nothing else. “Alexia is leading services at the Grand Cathedral while you’re there. If you’d like,” she says gently, quietly, “I can inform her that you’d like a pass to leave the Spire and attend one morning?” 

Ariadne lifts her gaze and meets Cora’s eyes. “I’d like that,” she says quietly. She fidgets with the lyrium ring on her thumb, and her eyes start to shine. She blinks, and then nods. “I’d like that a lot, thank you.”

“Consider it done,” Cora says, offering Ariadne a smile. She lightly sets her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder as she passes and gives her a gentle squeeze. She feels bone far too easily underneath the younger woman’s muscles. Ariadne flinches underneath her touch, a tiny twist away from Cora, and walks in the other direction. 

Cora frowns and looks over her shoulder, watching Ariadne walk away. Her bright red hair seems duller when she passes through patches of sunlight, and she’s carrying herself stiffly, like something hurts and she doesn’t want it to show. Enchanters’ robes are tailor-made to fit them, and Ariadne’s hang awkwardly off her shoulders.

Cora stays rooted in place, watching the empty hallway long after Ariadne has disappeared. Something is definitely wrong, and if the shadows haven’t lightened when Ariadne returns, she’ll push a little harder.

***

Riding for most of the day doesn’t help the dull ache between her legs, but she’d swiped a handful of pain potions before they left. After two days, with a pain potion snuck at breakfast and lunch and a healing potion at night, Ariadne’s able to ride without clenching her teeth against the pain. The sun’s warmth even sinks deep into her skin, warming her muscles and bones and heart, and with the distance between her and Christopher increasing, she feels more and more like herself.

She stayed awake almost the entire first night, watching the moons and stars crawl across the sky while Emelie snored softly in her own bedroll beside her. Halfway to Kirkwall, they were a long way away from him, but three and a half months have taught her to be scared. Still, she woke refreshed, despite falling asleep out of sheer exhaustion only shortly before dawn.

Three days into the journey, she’s even a little hungry again. Her feet are steadier beneath her, and her stomach doesn’t turn quite as much.

When they make camp beside the road on the fourth day, she sits next to the fire, watching wind blow through the wildflowers. Spring has long made it to Ostwick, and she’s sure the same purple wildflowers are growing beside the tower like they always do, but she can’t remember seeing them yet this year.

“Ari?”

Emelie’s voice pulls her away from the flowers and she looks up at the templar. “Yes?”

“Are you okay? You were staring at those flowers like you’d never seen them before.”

She nods and takes a sip from her cup; the water’s cold and clear and fresh. Though she’s free of him for the next two and a half weeks, she won’t be free once she returns. “Lost in thought, that’s all.”

_Tell Emelie._

But he’s right - no one will believe her, not now, not after she’s let this happen for three months. The time to tell someone was three months ago, when snow still covered the ground and the only flowers were in paintings. If someone would’ve listened at all.

***

Tobias, it turns out, is as trustworthy and helpful as Cora imagined. The dust, on the other hand, is a problem. Ariadne sneezes three times in rapid succession.

“Bless you,” Tobias says, from the ground below her.

“Thanks,” she sniffles. She keeps one hand on the ladder and wipes her eyes with the other. “You said the translation was up here?” With both hands firmly gripped on the rickety ladder again, she lifts up on her toes to get a better look over the shadowed top shelf. 

“No,” he says. “I believe the index is in that box over to your left, and the index will tell us where the translation is.”

Ariadne scoffs and looks down at Brother Tobias. “You need a better cataloging system, Tobias.” What he needs is a cataloging system of _any_ sort, but he’s convinced that the system in his head is good enough. He’s too kind a man for her to truly argue.

“Is there or is there not a box to your left with a stack of index parchments?” he says with a smile.

She sneezes again. “There is indeed a box.” Against her better judgment for something that’s been sitting uncovered and abandoned on the top shelf of a library for an unknown number of years, she sticks her hand in the box. “With parchments, though whether they’re indexes or not I can’t tell - it’s too dark up here.” With a great heave, she drags the box over to her and lifts it up. She passes it down to Tobias.

When the box is securely in his grasp, she lets go of her end and descends the ladder. With both feet on the floor, she exhales. She doesn’t mind heights, but the ladder is very tall and very old. She picks up the lantern Tobias left sitting on the first shelf, and follows him out of the stacks toward the tables where there is more light, and less dust.

Ariadne pushes her sleeves up, eager to dig through the box despite her doubts on Tobias’s memory. 

“Ariadne,” he says, his voice full of concern as she lifts a bound stack of parchment from the box, “what happened?”

She follows his gaze to her left wrist, and goes completely still.

In all her efforts with the ladder and the box, and several ladders and several boxes before that, the leather wrap around her wrist had loosened and shifted down her arm. The ugly greenish-yellow bruise stands out angrily against her pale skin, the perfect shape and place for someone’s grip.

The bruises are constant now, without much time to fade before he hurts her again. Away from his tight grasp for several days, the pain’s abated and she’s noticed them finally beginning to heal - both on her wrists and the rest of her body. Examining the bruises on her thighs this morning as she dressed in front of the mirror, she’d also noticed that she could count nearly all of her ribs. She’d turned away from the mirror and finished getting dressed without it.

_Tell Tobias._

She thinks of the younger ones - Miranda and Callie and Greta, and the even younger ones still under Mari’s watchful eye, all going to grow up with him in their tower. And she thinks of her friends - Margaret and Mari and Joanie, and even Sarah, though she’s in Nevarra most months now.

 _If his eyes are on me, they are not on someone else_. She’s not there right now, but he knows she’s coming back.

She swallows, hard. She has two weeks before she has to return to him.

“Knight Enchanter training involves a certain amount of combat,” she says with a small, forced smile. “I let my opponent get too close.”

He frowns, clearly disbelieving her. “I thought Knight Enchanters used swords.”

“Primarily,” she says, careful to keep her tone conversational. “But a longsword is no use if someone steps in closer than its reach. Hand-to-hand fighting is not my preference, but learning it is necessary.” She doesn’t tell him that she’s been trained in hand-to-hand combat since she arrived at the tower at thirteen, and she doesn’t tell him that she’s been trained in staff fighting since a year after that. The last time she allowed someone in a sparring match to get that close was a month ago and it was intentional - a demonstration with Liselle for the apprentices.

He nods, his belief swayed. “Is that the parchment we’re looking for?”

Ariadne tucks her hair behind her ear and swallows hard. The bruise is hideous and she wants nothing more than to shove the leather back over it and tug her sleeve all the way over her hand and hide the mark from sight. Combat bruises are nothing to be ashamed of, though, and nothing to hide - especially on someone training to be a Knight Enchanter. She’ll cover it up later, when Tobias isn’t watching her quite so intently.

She looks down at the stack of parchment. The ink on the yellow paper has faded nearly beyond recognition, but she can still make out enough words to know that it’s an index. She tugs at the twine holding the stack together, and the frayed thread comes apart in her fingers. Carefully, lest the parchment be as fragile as the twine, she looks through the first few pages. “You know, I believe it is. You are never allowed to die, Brother Tobias,” she says with a genuine smile, “or else the contents of the Archives will be a mystery to all generations who come after you.”

***

Vivienne, it seems, is not subject to the same rules as the rest of them. She’s temporarily in Val Royeaux on “court business,” staying at the Spire “to appease sensibilities, though not my own,” and in the same breath as insulting the porridge served for breakfast, she asks if Ariadne would like to spend the day with her, shopping.

Ariadne’s only in Val Royeaux for another week, and she’s still not found anything for Cora, so she shouldn’t. But she’s not seen any of the city since she arrived besides the Spire, the Archives, and the streets between them, and even she can’t spend two straight weeks doing nothing but research; her shoulders and back are a mess from so much reading. Emelie happily gives her permission and tells her to have fun. Shortly after breakfast, Vivienne ushers her to the front doors of the Spire, out into a light drizzle, and into a waiting carriage.

“My seamstress is across the city,” Vivienne explains, “and this weather is dreadful.” She turns, gives the address to the driver, and they depart, no templars in tow.

It’s strange. Ariadne’s been surrounded by templars since she was thirteen. Even when they weren’t in sight, they were near. Vivienne appears exempt from constant templar supervision through some blessing of the Empress, and even though Ariadne has Emelie’s permission, she still feels a little like she’s breaking the rules. 

Vivienne points out landmarks along the way, various shops (some she prefers, some she refuses to set foot in, her tone strongly suggesting that Ariadne do the same), an alleyway with a hidden market on alternate Saturdays, buildings of some historical importance. Ariadne listens quietly, and lets Vivienne’s melodic voice wash over her. There is no tower in this carriage, no Circle, no impossible research task, no Christopher invading her nights.

She can’t remember the last time she was this calm, or the last time her body didn’t ache with tension. Or the last time she had fun.

The carriage pulls up at a curb, and Vivienne shakes her head when Ariadne moves to exit. The driver opens the door for them. Vivienne thanks him for his service and, when his brow furrows, assures him that Duke Bastien has taken care of payment. Ariadne wonders who the Duke is, and what kind of relationship Vivienne has with him that he’s paying for her carriage rides; another mystery, like the ease with which Vivienne travels throughout Thedas. 

She carefully exits the carriage after Vivienne, her feet steadier underneath her than they have been in a long time. The rain drizzles on them only for a moment before they enter the unassuming building with deep forest green awning.

“Ah, my dear Vivienne!” A short, stout woman with graying hair sweeps into the _atelier_ ’s foyer. Her Orlesian accent is thick and sharp, but clear.

“Madame Heloise,” Vivienne says with a smile, voice as smooth as ever. She bends down so she and Heloise can greet each other with kisses on each cheek.

“Oh!” Heloise says, startled to notice Ariadne standing slightly behind Vivienne. “And who is this?”

Vivienne steps aside for introductions. “This is Enchanter Ariadne Trevelyan, of the Ostwick Circle. She is in Val Royeaux on a personal research trip through the Archives - isn’t that right, my dear?”

It isn’t, and she suspects Vivienne knows that, but she smiles and nods. “Yes,” she says, and offers Heloise her hand.

“Oh,” Heloise says, surprised, and then takes Ariadne’s hand in a limp handshake. “I’d nearly forgotten about Free Marches customs. Come, come in, the both of you,” she turns, leading them into a room in the back, with a hand-painted sign reading  _private_ standing beside the door. “Vivienne,” she says as she walks, “I was up all night when I heard you were coming, I have some new designs I think you will absolutely love.”

“Oh, my dear, you shouldn’t have. I ought to have given you more warning.”

“Nonsense,” Heloise says, gesturing for the two of them to sit on any of the couches or chairs circling the main fitting area. “You are one of my finest and most loyal customers. You deserve nothing but the most original creations.”

Ariadne sinks into the plush velvet couch. She feels like she should feel out of place here, a little dirty and a little awkward, like she isn’t shiny enough for Val Royeaux and needs to sit still lest she get her fingerprints on something pretty for someone important.

But she doesn’t feel out of place. Heloise’s assistant brings her a glass of crisp champagne just like she does for Vivienne, and, after discerning that Vivienne is here for a ballgown for an All Soul’s gala in Nevarra, Heloise turns her attentions solely to Ariadne.

“And you, my dear? What can I design for you today?” Her voice is genuine and kind, the same she used with Vivienne while discussing fabrics and necklines.

Ariadne shakes her head. “Nothing for me today,” she says, pushing a hint of apology into her voice. Everything in the shop is exquisite, but even if she had money to buy any of it, she’d have no place to wear it. “I’m simply keeping Lady Vivienne company.”

Heloise nods and claps her hands together. “With your needs in mind, I will leave you two to enjoy yourselves, and return with designs and samples.” She gestures to a long, low table below the window, filled with delicate and mouth-watering food, and then disappears into another room, her two assistants in tow.

While Vivienne places a small assortment of cheeses and fruits onto her plate, Ariadne stares at the selection. Except for holidays, Ostwick’s meals tend to be simple; flavorful and filling, but everything is simple - there are no apple pastries shaped like roses, and though there’s cake on birthdays at the Tower, it certainly isn’t miniature cakes with extravagant decorations. She places a large chocolate-covered strawberry onto her plate, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, picks up a tiny cake covered in glittering white icing, with a small candy lemon on top. Its white paper crinkles in her fingertips and she carefully sets it on her plate.

Ariadne can’t help but ask once she settles back into the couch. “All Soul’s in Nevarra?” She raises a skeptical eyebrow. She has friends who are necromancers, and she adores them, and she also adores All Soul’s, but the idea of spending All Soul’s in a country with a place called The Grand Necropolis is unappealing, to say the least.

Vivienne nods. “It is being thrown by a branch of the Pentaghast family, whose youngest son is courting one of the Empress’s cousins. I don’t particularly see the point in celebrating the dead in a land where they tend not to _stay_ dead, but the Empress is attending, and thus so shall I.”

Waves gently lap at the docks outside as rain continues to patter down. Ariadne cuts into the cake with her fork, revealing two layers of pale yellow cake with lemon curd between them. She takes a bite and her eyes flutter shut. Bright, tangy, sharp lemon fills her mouth. The soft, spongy cake tastes faintly of lemon, and she’s pleasantly surprised to find that the pure white icing is raspberry. 

“How is Ostwick, Ariadne?”

She stops chewing, and the lemon turns to ash on her tongue.

_Tell Vivienne._

She swallows. “The same as ever.” Her voice shakes, and any hope of Vivienne not noticing is dashed when the older woman tilts her head, and her eyebrows knit together in concern.

“My dear, is everything alright?” Vivienne asks softly. Heloise closed the door to the workroom behind her, but still Vivienne keeps her voice quiet, so no one can overhear.

The lie comes so easily now that the truth is what seems false. “Yes.” She takes another bite of cake, and it tastes of lemon again, but not as bright as it was.

***

Ariadne sits on the end of the the pew beside Emelie. The white marble of the Grand Cathedral arches high above them. Stained glass windows shine brilliantly in the morning sun. Every seat in every pew is filled, and the murmurs of low conversation echo throughout the large nave. Emelie reaches up and tucks her short dark hair behind her ear; the sunburst on the back of her hand almost seems to glow in the diffused, bright light of the Cathedral.

“I’ve never been here before,” she whispers to Ariadne.

“I was here a few years ago,” Ariadne whispers back, remembering sitting on a pew with only a few others scattered around her, listening to choir practice. Everything was so much brighter then. Those memories are hazy, like everything else before he came into her life. “I didn’t get to see services, though.”

A hush falls over the parishioners, and Ariadne looks forward, to the altar.

“I have faced armies with You as my shield,” a woman’s voice says, booming through the silence. 

Grand Cleric Alexia steps out of the shadows of the cloisters, and turns to her audience. “And though I bear scars beyond counting,” she pauses and stands at the head of the center aisle, back ramrod straight, hands at her sides. Filtered sunlight glitters behind her, and she almost seems to glow. She holds the silence for a beat longer, her audience in rapt attention. “Nothing can break me, except Your absence.”

Ariadne swallows. She’s said those same words more and more over the past weeks, though in shaky and hushed whispers, not with Alexia’s strength.

A moment of complete and utter silence passes, not even a cough, or the creak of a pew, or a shuffle of a foot. And then a soprano begins to sing from the choir stalls above.

_“Shadows fall, and hope has fled. Steel your heart, the dawn will come.”_

Tears spring to Ariadne’s eyes and she bows her head as the rest of the choir joins in. Their voices mix with the first woman’s, creating something at once more beautiful and more sad than Ariadne’s ever heard. Their voices carry through the white stone of the cathedral, and she feels the words wrap around her. 

There’s a brief pause at the end of the first verse and then they all stand to sing. She blinks, and tears fall even as her voice joins the others. She’s been singing the Chant since she was a child. Even on the steps of the Chantry, freezing and ignored, she sang loud and strong. But her voice shakes today and catches in a painful lump in her throat. 

She swallows the lump down and sings anyway, though the tears keep coming. _“Bare your blade, and raise it high. Stand your ground -”_

It suddenly hurts too much and she has to stop, though the entire congregation continues to sing around her. Hot tears stream down her face and her shoulders shake. _Oh, Maker. I would never question your will. But please - please - I want him to stop._

Suddenly Emelie’s arm is around her shoulders, and she leans into the templar’s silent support. She takes short, labored breaths, and tries to stem her tears. If she doesn’t, she’ll break right here and there’s too much hurt inside of her. She might not be able to pick up all the pieces.

 _“...for one day soon, the dawn will come,”_ the soprano finishes the last note alone. Her voice seems to hang in the air.

Ariadne wipes at her cheeks, tears under control for now. Emelie briefly tightens her arm, and Ariadne nods in silent thanks and pulls away.

“And the armies of Andraste raised their voice, singing a hymn of praise to the Maker,” Alexia says in the empty silence that follows. Her voice is softer now, quieter, but no less passionate. “And feared no more. And Andraste went apart to seek the Maker’s wisdom for the battle to come.” She holds the crowd in silence for half a moment longer.

“Be seated.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the night is long, and the path is dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to **thievinghippo** for wondrous beta work, and to **bloomingcnidarians** for being such an amazing cheerleader. And thanks to **all of you** for continuing to read.
> 
> An administrative note: after this chapter, this story is on hiatus until October 12th (due to Real Life - aka _work is kicking my ass_ \- reasons).

Tobias lights the torch with his candle, casting light the dim hallway. Ariadne’s breath catches in her throat. Boxes upon boxes line the hall, some stacked three high.  


“These are _all_ incident records?” she asks, and her heart starts to pound. On a whim, the day after she attended Alexia’s sermon, she asked Tobias if there were any Circle incident records in the Archives. He’d looked at her funny, but told her there were. She’d filed that information away to focus, undistracted, on Cora’s task; she’s found a few new writings for Cora over the past two weeks, though hardly anything all but the most liberal in the Chantry would consider valid. But she’s exhausted all of Tobias’ resources, and she leaves in two days. She’s read all of the records housed at Ostwick, and though there’s a sinking feeling in her gut about what she’ll find in the boxes before her, she can’t not look.

“Yes, unfortunately. Ariadne,” he turns to her, the candle in his hand illuminating his kind face in the shadowy hallway, “what are you looking for?” 

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Nothing she finds in these boxes will help Cora, and she’s not even sure it will help _her_. In fact, she’s almost certain it _won’t_ help her, but she can’t turn away. She isn’t the only one, not by far. It’s sickening, but also a little comforting - she _isn’t_ the only one. She doesn’t know any of the others, not personally, but she knows their names and their stories, and she feels a little less alone for it.

She knows their names and she knows their stories, but none of them got justice; none of them got even a little bit of help. But maybe somewhere in these boxes is one mage, she only needs one, who was heard, who was believed. Who wasn’t forced to spend the rest of their lives in a tower with a templar who hurt them. If she finds one, then there’s hope for her - hope that Cora will listen, that Edward will listen. 

Hope that maybe, some day, she’ll be able to live without Christopher’s voice in her ear and his hands on her skin.

“Alright,” Tobias says. His brow furrows in concern. “I’ll keep a watch at the stairs, but you are not supposed to be down here. I don’t know how much time you’ll have.”

She looks at him, a caring old man who hardly knows anything about her but is worried and helping anyway, who’s breaking the rules for her, and finds herself suddenly next to tears. 

She should tell him. He’d help. He doesn’t know her, not like anyone back at Ostwick, but he’s part of the Chantry: he might have more pull than Cora, than Edward. She’s already here in Val Royeaux, they might just let her stay at the Spire; it would mean leaving her friends and her apprentices, her entire _life_ , behind, but she’d be free of him. Vivienne was allowed to transfer simply by asking, maybe she could do the same, without even telling anyone why.

But Cora would ask, and Joanie and Margaret would write, and they all deserve to know that she hadn’t just abandoned them. The truth would come out anyway.

So she stays quiet, and holds back her tears. “Thank you,” she says.

With a nod, Tobias takes his candle and leaves the way they came, heading back for the stairs.

Alone in the hallway, Ariadne’s shallow, rapid breaths fill the silence. She allows herself ten seconds to let her feelings overwhelm her - panic and despair and hurt and sadness and confusion and desperation and things she can’t even name all come crashing down on her at once.

And then her ten seconds are up and she takes three deep, measured breaths. _Breathe in, breathe out._ And she rolls up her sleeves, and goes to work.

Four hours later, Tobias calls her name in a hushed whisper - a warning that someone’s coming. Four hours and thirty boxes. Four hours and thirty boxes, at least one from every Circle across Orlais, Ferelden, and the Free Marches. 

Not all the mages were hurt like she’s been, but not a single report ended in the templar being punished. Just like the reports she read back home, not a single report ended in the mage being protected. The Seekers were called in fewer than a tenth.

She leaves Val Royeaux in two days. Four days after that, she’ll be back in Ostwick. He’s there, and he’ll keep hurting her because even if she told someone, no one would listen.

Cora would listen, she’s sure of it, and maybe even believe her. Maybe even Edward, too. Their names weren’t on any of the reports from Blackrock Tower, maybe they’re different from other First Enchanters and Knight Commanders. But after reading countless records, she’s even _more_ sure that nothing would come of it even if they did listen, even if they did believe her. And as awful and terrible as things are now, as dull and lifeless and just _hurt_ as she feels, it’s certainly nothing compared to how she’d feel if she told them and nothing changed. 

Ariadne closes the lid of her current box, hastily wipes at her cheeks, and rushes down the hallway toward Tobias.

***

Her room in the Spire is tiny, half the size she’s accustomed to at Ostwick, and without even a window. But she doesn’t want to leave it. Small though it may be, no one’s shoved her through the door at night. No one’s let himself in, no one’s held her down against the bed and blocked her magic as he hurts her.

The room is so small she can reach out with both arms and touch each rough stone wall with her fingertips, but inside it is the safest she’s felt in months. Her breath rises in her throat as she packs her belongings - she hadn’t brought much. Tears prick at her eyes while she folds up her robes, and she lets the tears fall.

She has to go back. She can’t _not_ go back. But going back means going back to _him_ , and by then he’ll have had over three weeks where he hasn’t touched her - the longest he’s ever gone since this began. Going back means sharp pain and bruises and nausea, and that terrible, terrible potion.

Panic presses in on all sides, a thick dark cold cloud of fear.

Her shoulders shake as she carefully sets her clothes in her bag. Everything’s brighter here: colors more vibrant, shadows aren’t quite as dark, and food tastes better - though she has an orange with breakfast every day at home, she’d forgotten what they tasted like until lunch yesterday; so tart and juicy, _happy_. 

Ostwick is full of dim, muted colors. It’s hazy and cold, even when the sun’s shining bright and warm. It wasn’t always that way, and she tries to remember it as she saw it as a child: full of wonder and excitement, books and magic, _Lily_ \- but those memories are hazy, too. 

Her heart pounds loud and quick and her breath catches in her throat and she slides to the floor. Leaning against the bed, she rests her elbows on her knees and tangles her fingers through her hair. “I don’t want to go back, I don’t want to go back, _I don’t want to go back_ ,” she whispers over and over again through her tears. She tugs on her hair, trying to keep herself from falling completely over the edge into panic.

She isn’t sure she’ll be able to climb out again.

***

Vivienne sits opposite Ariadne in the hall for breakfast. Something’s been off - _wrong_ \- about the younger woman. She remembers Ariadne from three years ago as a happy, upbeat, curious girl. Ariadne is as friendly as ever, and smiles almost as much, but Vivienne noticed a shadow in Ariadne at the Wintersend gala nearly two months ago, though that hadn’t been the proper time or place to bring it up. The same shadow has only grown darker in the months since. 

The shadow lifted some at Madame Heloise’s, and Ariadne’s smile actually lit up her whole face when Vivienne bought her an emerald green silk scarf on their way out, but the shadow’s even clearer this morning. The subtle fear that’s been resting on Ariadne’s shoulders doesn’t fit with what Vivienne knows of Cora, or how Cora runs her Circle, and it’s been bothering her the entire week since she arrived. 

“Ariadne,” she says gently, after the other mages at the table vacate their spaces, leaving them alone, “you’ve seemed not quite yourself. Are you alright?”

Ariadne looks up from her eggs. “I miss Lily,” she whispers.

She heard pieces of the story during their afternoon at Madame Heloise’s, and the familiar waver in Ariadne’s voice digs at old, long-buried pain in Vivienne’s heart. She swallows, and mentally swats the pain away to focus on the young woman. While Ariadne does miss clearly Lily, sadness is not the same thing as fear. “Is that all?”

Ariadne nods, but the nod comes a fraction too late, and a fraction too short, for Vivienne to believe it.

“Ari.” Vivienne usually despises nicknames; they’re far too crass. But Ariadne is fragile and skittish this morning, and using her full name might scare her off. 

Ariadne huffs and stabs her sausage with her fork. “Why is everyone convinced I’m not okay?”

“Your robes are hanging off of you, you are constantly glancing over your shoulder, and you looked positively petrified when Emelie mentioned that you will be leaving shortly after breakfast.”

“Vivienne,” she protests, staring down at her plate.

“You do not need to tell _me_ what’s wrong, Ariadne.” She waits for Ariadne to look up, and she holds the younger woman’s gaze. “But you ought to tell _someone_.”

She shakes her head. “There is nothing to tell.”

Vivienne blinks slowly. She’s never believed anything less in her life. Cora isn’t an idiot; she has to have noticed by now that something is very wrong with one of her mages, but if she hasn’t pushed the issue already, there must be reasons. It’s taken nearly two decades, but she and Cora have succeeded in maintaining a civil friendship largely by not interfering with each other’s business. Still, Ariadne is sitting before her, clearly frightened and panicked.

“In the absence of light, my dear,” she says quietly, “shadows thrive.”

Ariadne takes a deep, measured breath, and continues eating in silence.

***

Ariadne’s careful to mask her emotions on the ride back. Emelie is content to ride quietly beside her, occasionally breaking the silence to suggest a break, or a stop for the night.

Three weeks was long enough for the tide to recede, just long enough for her to start to heal, but now it’s crashing back in. Her mind fills with noise, an incoherent and overwhelming loudness that makes her want to scream - _I don’t want to go back, please don’t make me go back!_ Amidst all of it, Vivienne’s words echo inside her head.

As they ride closer to Ostwick, the cloud of panic grows more and more dense. It settles heavily on her shoulders, creeps down her spine, and curls around her lungs. When they take the final turn on the coast road and Blackrock Tower comes into view, tall and dark against the bright blue sky as it rises straight from the sea, she tightens her heels against her horse. 

But Emelie can outride her, and she’d be caught within minutes. Much like what would happen if she asked to transfer Circles, she’d be asked why she ran. Even if she told the truth, nothing would happen - everything would probably be worse. 

Her breath shakes, but she straightens her spine and loosens her legs. She won’t run, even though every part of her body screams for her to run for the hills and not look back.

Cora’s waiting for them on the steps. “Did you find anything?” she asks, once the horses are back in the stable and Emelie is out of earshot.

Ariadne reaches into her bag and withdraws her notebook. Though the panic threatens to strangle her, pride flickers somewhere deep inside of her. She may not have found anything that helps herself, but she may have found something that helps Cora. “Some,” she says, slipping the notebook into Cora’s hands. “A few elf mages, a dwarf with some interesting theories, and a very drunk and excommunicated Sister.”

Cora nods and tucks the notebook under her arm. “How was your trip otherwise? I hope you got to have some fun, and didn’t spend the whole two weeks locked up in a library.”

Smiling - Cora well knows that spending two weeks in a library _is_ her idea of fun - Ariadne nods. “I did,” she says. Tobias was a joy to work with, and shopping with Vivienne was a moment of delight she desperately needed, and sitting in the Grand Cathedral listening to the choir and Alexia had been soothing, despite her tears. “It was a good trip.” She follows Cora into the tower as the sun starts to set.

She only hopes this isn’t the last time that she gets to smile, and mean it.

They walk through the entryway and knot of cold dread settles into the pit of her stomach. Her shoulders tighten and her entire body tenses - on alert for a fight she’ll never be able to start, let alone finish. She looks across the hall and clenches her back teeth; Christopher’s standing guard beside the east hallway, staring at her. 

Ariadne swallows, waves goodbye to Cora and walks straight past him, refusing to even acknowledge him as she walks up the stairs to her room to unpack.

***

“Okay. You missed three new apprentices,” Margaret says at breakfast the next morning, “two of them winter, one of them storm. The still that Andrew and Ferdinand had in the lower level storage closet finally blew up, but we’re all pretending we didn’t know what they were making. Rachael finished her vigil and is finally a full templar. Greta passed her Harrowing, though it took almost until dawn.”

“I’m officially a medium,” Mari interrupts, a rare grin crossing her face.

“Congratulations!” Ariadne smiles at her. Mari’s tendency to talk to spirits all the time is unsettling, especially since Ariadne can’t see them, but she’s happy for her friend. There isn’t much about her own life to be happy about lately, especially now that she’s back, but at least her friends can have some joy.

Margaret counts off her bits of news on her fingers and, having reached the last one, finishes with, “And Samuel tried to get rid of the rats in the dungeons by casting Pull of the Abyss, but something went wrong and now they’re just eating everything they can find.”

Joanie snorts. “Like you’ve never done anything stupid when you learn a new spell, Miss Spent-Three-Days-In-The-Infirmary-Because-Her-Fade-Shroud-Backfired-And-She’s-Missing-Part-Of-Her-Ear.”

Ariadne stifles a laugh, but Mari doesn’t bother trying to conceal it. They’d all received lectures reminding them of spell safety after that incident.

“Oh,” Margaret smirks. “And Joanie’s sleeping with Samuel.”

“You’ve _all_ slept with Samuel,” Joanie says, gesturing to the table, “it’s practically a rite of passage.”

Ariadne lifts her hand to state the obvious. “I haven’t.”

“You don’t like boys,” Joanie says. 

“No,” Ariadne whispers, “I don’t.” She awoke this morning to fresh angry bruises on her wrists and a throbbing ache between her thighs, a staunch reminder that the night before wasn’t a nightmare. With a sharp inhale, she swallows down the memory of the purple bruises around her wrists, and focuses on her friends.

“Neither have I,” Sarah says.

“Whatever,” Joanie waves their hand through the air. “The point is, I am not the only one at this table who has slept with Samuel, and I don’t know why those of you who have are making such a big deal out of it.”

Mari nearly chokes on her water. “Because it’s _you_.”

Margaret points at Mari. “What she said.”

Joanie’s eyes narrow into an ineffective glare. They turn to Ariadne. “How was Val Royeaux?” they ask, inelegantly changing the subject.

Ariadne smiles. She may have returned to pain, but she’s missed her friends.

***

She waits until he leaves, and then turns on her side and draws her knees to her chest. The spring moon is bright and full tonight, shining in through her window. Summerday is in a week and a half, and she wonders if he’ll ruin Summerday for her the way he ruined First Day and Wintersend.

His seed trickles out of her, trailing down her thigh, and she closes her eyes. She’ll stand and clean up in a moment, wipe him out of her as best she can and take a potion for the rest, but her limbs feel so heavy. This night wasn’t any different than the others, but giving up - giving _in_ \- has never felt like such an option before. If she stops fighting, perhaps he won’t be as angry and won’t hurt her as much.

Darkness swirls up around her in a way it hasn’t in months, not even three weeks ago, when she first returned and he used her twice. Tonight wasn’t any worse than the other nights, not any different than the other nights, but it is the first time she’s felt _defeated_. 

There’s no way out - this is her life now.

The darkness envelops her mind and body in shadows, and gently tries to tug her away. She should resist, she should open her eyes and get up and take care of things, but the darkness promises to take her someplace else, away from this room. Hot tears fall down her cheeks; she wants so badly to be anywhere but here. She could just fall into the darkness, it would be so easy.

A bright white spark swims upward through the darkness, so faint that at first she doesn’t even think it’s real.

 _Ariadne!_ A familiar voice calls her name, and the spark grows brighter and bigger.

The Chantry bells ring twice.

 _Ariadne!_ It calls again, circling around her.

She curls tighter around herself. _Help. Help me, please._

The spark glows a brilliant, blinding, overwhelming white, and she stops feeling anything at all.

***

Ariadne opens her eyes, and the Chantry bells ring four times.

Barefoot, clean, and in a fresh nightgown, she stands alone in the hallway outside Cora’s bedroom. 

She gasps and her eyes widen. Panicked, she looks around. She stares into dark corners, trying to make shapes out of the shadows - _he’s here, he followed me, how did I get here?_

Cool wind blows in from the open window, fluttering the hem of her nightgown. She instinctively rubs her hands against her upper arms for warmth, but she isn’t cold. She stills, and drops her hands back down by her sides. She isn’t cold at all, not even her bare feet on the stone floor. 

Her eyes widen further and cast about frantically, looking for something and hoping she finds nothing. She stands perfectly still, as if moving even her toe would be as bright as the tower’s lighthouse in the night, calling him to her. The only thing louder than her shallow, rapid breathing is her heart, pounding in her ears.

The moon is hardly a sliver in the sky and the torch on the wall struggles to stay lit in the breeze, but despite the dim light, it’s clear she is alone.

_Breathe in, breathe out. Tell Cora._

Ariadne’s hand raises and knocks firmly three times.

_Please, Ariadne. Tell Cora._

****

A flash of white light bursts from inside of her, almost like something being pulled _from_ her, and she stumbles. The light disappears immediately, and purple spots dance across her vision. She blinks them away, and her breath is almost deafening in the silent hallway. She shivers. 

She braces her hand on the wall to steady herself. Slowly, she turns around, but the hallway is still empty. She clenches her teeth against a wave of hysteria - _how did I get here?!_ \- and takes a very shaky breath.

A few moments pass, and then the door opens. Ariadne startles at the noise and turns to find Cora, standing in the doorway and backlit by low candlelight from her quarters.

Cora looks up at Ariadne, sleepy-eyed and confused. “Ari?”

Whatever strength came to help walk her to this door and knock has disappeared. This final piece is all her, and she can’t turn back now.

_Tell Cora._

The first two tries, no words come out. She takes another breath. 

Cora goes fuzzy in front of her as her vision blurs, and she reaches out to grab the wall as her legs start to shake. Every last bit of energy inside of her goes toward finding the strength to say four words.

“Ser Christopher raped me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you. _All of you_. Thank you so much for sticking with me through this awful, awful plot; there's a lot of healing to go through, but we're done with the immediate bad stuff.


End file.
